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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Slielf...i..S-*J-. 

UNITED STATES OF AMEEICA. 



MASTERPIECES OF BRITISH 
LITERATURE 



RUSKIN: MACAULAY: BROWN: TENNYSON 

DICKENS: WORDSWORTH: BURNS: LAMB 

COLERIDGE: BYRON: COWPER: GRAY 

GOLDSMITH: ADDISON AND STEELE 

MILTON: BACON 



WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES N^^^i^^xv. 
NOTES, AND PORTRAITS 




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BOSTON, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 



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Copyright, 1895, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 3Iass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped aud Friuted by H. O, Houghtou & Co. 



PREFACE. 



The favorable reception given to Masterpieces of 
American Authors lias led the publishers to put 
forth this companion volume, constructed on similar 
lines. It will be evident, however, on a moment's 
consideration that the conditions in this case are less 
simple. It is very easy to reflect a general agreement 
in choosing the authors to be represented in a selec- 
tion from American classic literature, and in the main 
to determine what choice should be made from their 
writings. But in any survey of the classic literature 
of England, Scotland, and Ireland, reaching back as 
it does into remote time, there is opportunity for 
much divergence of opinion as to the best selection 
to be made. 

The editor, seeking advice from many experienced 
teachers of English, has been governed by a few plain 
considerations. The space at his conmiand had to be 
used frugally. The object to be kept in view was 
rather the agreeable introduction to great literature 
than drill in grammar or elocution. Hence it seemed 
desirable to proceed from the easy to the more diffi- 
cult, and by a natural course this meant the ascent 
from the contemporary to the more remote. But it 



iv PREFACE. 

was necessary to stop short of tlie archaic forms. The 
plan forbade fragments, and it was not practicable to 
introduce an entire play of Shakespeare, or to give 
anything from Spenser or Chaucer. 

The equipment of the book has been in the way of 
brief biographical introductions, to enable the reader 
to apprehend something of the historical relations of 
each author, and of such footnotes as would explain 
difficulties in words or passages and occasionally stim- 
ulate to further inquiry ; but as a rule, whenever a 
question could be answered by reference to a good 
dictionary, it has been ignored in the footnotes. 

As far as possible, in accordance with the title of 
the book, the selections have given opportunity for 
illustrating the scope of the author's genius, but in 
one or two instances, notably in the case of Words- 
worth and Burns, emphasis has been laid upon one 
form, the lyrical, as best suited to the demands of 
the reader. In brief, the book does not profess to be 
a comprehensive survey of British literature, but such 
a compilation from the writings of story-tellers, poets, 
and essayists, as may give an appreciative reader a 
generous draught from the well of good English. 
By the time a young reader has reached this book, he 
ought to be ready for large enjoyment of literature, 
and the editor trusts that Masterpieces of British 
Literature will prove a delight to many, a task to 
none. 
Boston, August 1, 1895. 



CONTENTS. 



JOHN RUSKIN. PAGE 

Biographical Sketch 1 

The King of the Golden River .... 4 

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

Biographical Sketch 35 

horatius 37 

DR. JOHN BROWN. 

Biographical Sketch 62 

Rab and his Friends 64 

Our Dogs 82 

ALFRED TENNYSON. 

Biographical Sketch 97 

Enoch Arden 100 

The Charge of the Light Brigade .... 131 

The Death of the Old Year 133 

Crossing the Bar 135 

CHARLES DICKENS. 

Biographical Sketch 137 

The Seven Poor Travellers ..... 140 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

Biographical Sketch 155 

We are Seven 158 

The Pet Lamb 161 

The Reverie of Poor Susan 165 

To a Skylark 166 

To THE Cuckoo 166 

She was a Phantom of Delight 167 

Three Years she Grew 168 

She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways . . .170 

Daffodils 171 

To THE Daisy 172 

Yarrow Un visited 173 



vi CONTENTS. 

Stepping Westward . 176 

Sonnet, comi'Osed upon Westminster Bridge . . 177 

To Sleep . 177 

It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free . . 178 
Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg 178 
Kesolution and Independence 180 

ROBERT BURNS. 

Biographical Sketch 186 

The Cotter's Saturday Night 190 

To a Mouse 199 

To A Mountain Daisy . 201 

A Bard's Epitaph 204 

Songs : 

For A' That and A' That 205 

AuLD Lang Syne 207 

My Father was a Farmer 208 

John Anderson 210 

Flow Gently, Sweet Apton 211 

Highland Mary ....... 212 

To Mary in Heaven 214 

I Love my Jean 215 

Oh, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast . . . 216 

A Red, Red Rose 217 

Mary Morison 217 

Wandering Willie 218 

My Nannie 's Aw a' . . ' 219 

Bonnie Doon 220 

My Heart 's in the Highlands .... 221 

CHARLES LAMB. 

BiOGRAPEacAL Sketch 222 

Essays of Elia : 

Dream Children : A Reverie 226 

A Dissertation upon Roast Pig .... 232 

Barbara S 242 

Old China 249 

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, 

Biographical Sketch . , 258 

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner .... 262 
KuBLA Khan ; or, A Vision in a Dream . . . 290 

LORD BYRON. 

Biographical Sketch 292 

The Prisoner of Chillon 295 



CONTENTS. vii 

Sonnet 308 

Fake Thee Well . . . . . . . .309 

She Walks in Beauty 312 

The Destruction of Sennacherib 313 

WILLIAM COWPER, 

Biographical Sketch 315 

The Diverting History of John Gilpin . . . 320 
On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture . . 330 
On the Loss of the Royal George .... 334 
Verses, supposed to be Written by Alexander Sel- 
kirk 336 

Epitaph on a Hare 339 

The Treatment of his Hares 341 

THOMAS GRAY. 

Biographical Sketch 348 

Elegy, written in a Country Churchyard . . 354 
On a Distant Prospect of Eton College . . . 3G3 

OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Biographical Sketch 367 

The Deserted Village 373 

SIR ROGER DE COVERLET PAPERS. 

Introduction 394 

The Spectator's Account of Himself .... 397 

The Club 403 

Sir Roger at his Country House 413 

The Coverley Household 418 

Will Wimble 422 

Death of Sir Roger de Coverley .... 427 

JOHN MILTON. 

Biographical Sketch 432 

L' Allegro 438 

II Penseroso 445 

Lycidas 454 

FRANCIS BACON. 

Biographical Sketch 466 

Bacon's Essays: 

Of Travel 471 

Of Studies 473 

Of Suspicion 475 

Of Negotiating 476 

Of Masques and Triumphs 478 



^ 





...^Ml 



JOHN RUSKIN. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

John Ruskin is an English writer who has puzzled some 
people because, becoming famous as a critic of art, he con- 
cerned himself more earnestly as he grew older with the 
question how men and women should live so as to make the 
world in which they lived beautiful. He was born Febru- 
ary 8, 1819, the year in which James Russell Lowell was 
born. His father was a rich wine-merchant who lived in 
London, but both he and his wife were of Scotch descent. 
John Ruskin was their only child, and they not only gave 
him the best education they could find, his mother especially 
making him thorouglily acquainted with the Bible, but from 
early years they treated him as their comjDanion, took him 
on long journeys in the family chaise, and when he had 
been graduated at Oxford, carried him to the continent 
and showed him Switzerland and Italy. 

When he was twelve years old a friend gave him a copy 
of Samuel Rogers's poem, Italy, illustrated by Turner, an 
English artist, who was a friend of his father. His love of 
art was stimulated by the pictures and with all that he saw 
of Turner's work, and though when a boy and youth he 
seemed to care more about writing poetry than anything 
else, he was really feeding all the time his love of beauty. 
He studied painting, and began himself to paint. One day 
he read, in Blackivood's Magazine, a harsh criticism of 
Turner. He sprang indignantly to the defence of the great 
painter, but as he plunged into his task, he found himself 



2 JOHN RUSKIN. 

grappling with fundamental questions of art; his work 
grew, and in 1843, when he was twenty-four years old, he 
published the first volume of Modern Painters, a famous 
examination of art, especially landscape art, and only inci- 
dentally, though emphatically, a defence of Turner. 

For twenty years Ruskin devoted himself mainly to writ- 
ing on art. His books had a very great influence both on 
painters and architects in calling their attention to great 
principles in art, and on public taste. But by and by, his 
readers noticed that as he insisted on purity and truthful- 
ness of ideas as essential to right drawing and color, he 
began also to inquire into the failure of great art, and to 
ask if great art and good art did not depend upon the right 
living of people. In a word, just as before he started to 
defend Turner and found he must go to the bottom and 
study the whole meaning of modern art, so now he could 
not satisfy himself short of an examination of the whole 
structure of human society. 

He was a painter when he undertook to write about paint- 
ing, and his own work in water-color was a guide to his 
criticism in art. When he was possessed with the belief that 
the world was going wrong in its industry and its common 
life, he set about making a new world in a small way. He 
formed a society, called St. George's Company, started a 
farm, set up a shop, and in various ways tried to show how 
men and women might begin a new order of things by obe- 
dience to certain great laws. He tried a great many exper- 
iments, and they formed the basis of the books he now wrote 
in which he sought to get at the sound principles of right 
living. He made himself very unhappy, but he must needs 
keep on, like an old prophet who uttered his cries and lam- 
entations and warnings, though few seemed to heed him. 
Now and then he would return to his thoughts about art, 
but they were mingled with these new, more pressing 
thoughts. He addressed a long series of letters to working- 
men, and finally he began a beautiful narrative of his own 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 3 

life, but laid the pen down out of physical and mental 
weariness before he finished it. 

It was when he was a young man, before he wrote 
Modern Painters, that he wrote the pretty fairy-tale which 
follows. 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 

I. 

In a secluded and mountainous part of Styria there 
was, in old time, a valley of tlie most surprising and 
luxuriant fertility. It was surrounded on all sides 
by steep and rocky mountains, rising into peaks, whick 
were always covered with snow, and from which a 
number of torrents descended in constant cataracts. 
One of these fell westward, over the face of a crag so 
high that, when the sun had set to everything else, 
and all below was darkness, his beams still shone full 
upon this waterfall, so that it looked like a shower of 
gold. It was therefore called by the people of the 
neighborhood the Golden River. It was strange that 
none of these streams fell into the valley itself. They 
all descended on the other side of the mountains, and 
wound away through broad plains and by populous 
cities. But the clouds were drawn so constantly to 
the snowy hills, and rested so softly in the circular 
hollow, that, in time of drought and heat, when all the 
country round was burnt up, there was still rain in 
the little valley ; and its crops were so heavy, and its 
hay so high, and its apples so red, and its grapes so 
blue, and its wine so rich, and its honey so sweet, that 
it was a marvel to every one who beheld it, and was 
commonly called the Treasure Valley. 

The whole of this little valley belonged to three 
brothers, called Schwartz, Hans, and Gluck. Schwartz 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 5 

and Hans, the two elder brothers, were very ugly men, 
with overhanging eyebrows and small, dull eyes, which 
were always half shut, so that you could n't see into 
them, and always fancied they saw very far into you. 
They lived by farming the Treasure Valley, and very 
good farmers they were. They killed everything that 
did not pay for its eating. They shot the blackbirds, 
because they pecked the fruit ; and killed the hedge- 
hogs, lest they should suck the cows ; they poisoned 
the crickets for eating the crumbs in the kitchen ; and 
smothered the cicadas, which used to sing all summer 
in the lime-trees. They worked their servants with- 
out any wages, till they would not work any more, and 
then quarrelled with them, and turned them out of 
doors without paying them. It would have been very 
odd if, with such a farm, and such a system of farm- 
ing, they had n't got very rich ; and very rich they did 
get. They generally contrived to keep their corn by 
them till it was very dear, and then sell it for twice its 
value ; they had heaps of gold lying about on their 
floors, yet it was never known that they had given so 
much as a penny or a crust in charity ; they never 
went to mass ; grumbled perpetually at paying tithes ; 
and were, in a word, of so cruel and grinding a tem- 
per, as to receive from all those with Avhom they had 
any dealings, the nickname of the " Black Brothers." 
The youngest brother, Gluck, was as completely 
opposed, in both appearance and character, to his sen- 
iors as could possibly be imagined or desired. He 
was not above twelve years old, fair, blue-eyed, and 
kind in temper to every living thing. He did not, of 
course, agree particularly well with his brothers, or, 
rather, they did not agree with him. He was usually 
appointed to the honorable office of turnspit, when 



6 JOHN RUSKIN. 

there was anything to roast, which was not often ; for, 
to do the brothers justice, they were hardly less spar- 
ing upon themselves than upon other people. At other 
times he used to clean the shoes, the floors, and some- 
times the plates, occasionally getting what was left on 
them, by way of encouragement, and a wholesome 
quantity of dry blows, by way of education. 

Things went on in this manner for a long time. At 
last came a very wet summer, and everything went 
wrong in the country round. The hay had hardly 
been got in, when the haystacks were floated bodily 
down to the sea by an inundation ; the vines were cut 
to pieces with the hail ; the corn was all killed by a 
black blight ; only in the Treasure Yalley, as usual, 
all was safe. As it had rain when there was rain no- 
where else, so it had sun when there was sun nowhere 
else. Everybody came to buy corn at the farm, and 
went away pouring maledictions on the Black Bro- 
thers. They asked what they liked, and got it, except 
from the poor people, who could only beg, and several 
of whom were starved at their very door, without the 
slightest regard or notice. 

It was drawing toward winter, and very cold wea- 
ther, when one day the two elder brothers had gone 
out, with their usual warning to little Gluck, who was 
left to mind the roast, that he was to let nobody in, 
and give nothing out. Gluck sat down quite close to 
the fire, for it was raining very hard, and the kitchen 
walls were by no means dry or comfortable looking. 
He turned and turned, and the roast got nice and 
brown. " What a pity," thought Gluck, " my bro- 
thers never ask anybody to dinner. I 'm sure, when 
they 've got such a nice piece of mutton as this, and 
nobody else has got so much as a piece of dry bread, 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 7 

it would do their hearts good to have somebody to eat 
it with them." 

Just as he spoke, there came a double knock at the 
house-door, yet heavy and dull, as though the knocker 
had been tied up, — more like a puff than a knock. 

" It must be the wind," said Gluck ; " nobody else 
would venture to knock double knocks at our door." 

No ; it was n't the wind ; there it came again very 
hard, and, what was particularly astounding, the 
knocker seemed to be in a hurry, and not to be in 
the least afraid of the consequences. Gluck went to 
the window, opened it, and put his head out to see 
who it was. 

It was the most extraordinary-looking little gentle- 
man he had ever seen in his life. He had a very large 
nose, slightly brass-colored ; his cheeks were very 
round and very red, and might have warranted a sup- 
position that he had been blowing a refractory fire for 
the last eight-and-forty hours ; his eyes twinkled mer- 
rily through long silky eyelashes, his mustaches curled 
twice round like a corkscrew on each side of his mouth, 
and his hair, of a curious mixed pepper-and-salt color, 
descended far over his shoulders. He was about four 
feet six in height, and wore a conical pointed cap of 
nearly the same altitude, decorated with a black feather 
some three feet long. His doublet was prolonged be- 
hind into something resembling a violent exaggeration 
of what is now termed a " swallow-tail," but was much 
obscured by the swelling folds of an enormous black, 
glossy-looking cloak, which must have been very much 
too long in calm weather, as the wind, whistling round 
the old house, carried it clear out from the wearer's 
shoulders to about four times his own length. 

Gluck was so perfectly paralyzed by the singular 



8 JOHN RUSKIN. 

appearance of his visitor, that he remained fixed with- 
out uttering a word, until the old gentleman, having 
performed another and a more energetic concerto on 
the knocker, turned round to look after his fly-away 
cloak. In so doing he caught sight of Gluck's little 
yellow head jammed in the window, with its mouth 
and eyes very wide open indeed. 

" Hollo ! " said the little gentleman, " that 's not 
the way to answer the door ; I 'm wet, let me in." 

To do the little gentleman justice, he was wet. 
His feather hung down between his legs like a beaten 
puppy's tail, dripping like an umbrella ; and from the 
ends of his mustaches the water was running into his 
waistcoat-pockets, and out again like a mill-stream. 

*' I beg pardon, sir," said Gluck, " I 'm very sorry, 
but I really can't." 

" Can't what ? " said the old gentleman. 

" I can't let you in, sir, — I can't, indeed ; my bro- 
thers would beat me to death, sir, if I thought of such 
a thing. What do you want, sir ? " 

"Want?" said the old gentleman, petulantly, "I 
want fire and shelter ; and there 's your great fire 
there blazing, crackling, and dancing on the walls, 
with nobody to feel it. Let me in, I say ; I only want 
to warm myself." 

Gluck had had his head, by this time, so long out 
of the window that he began to feel it was really 
unpleasantly cold, and when he turned, and saw the 
beautiful fire rustling and roaring, and throwing long 
bright tongues up the chimney, as if it were licking 
its chops at the savory smell of the leg of mutton, his 
heart melted within him that it should be burning 
away for nothing. " He does look very wet," said 
little Gluck ; " I '11 just let him in for a quarter of an 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 9 

hour." Round he went to the door, and opened it ; 
and as the little gentleman walked in, through the 
house came a gust of wind that made the old chimneys 
totter. 

" That 's a good boy," said the little gentleman. 
" Never mind your brothers. I '11 talk to them." 

"Pray, sir, don't do any such thing," said Gluck. 
" I can't let you stay till they come ; they 'd be the 
death of me." 

" Dear me," said the old gentleman, " I 'm very 
sorry to hear that. How long may I stay ? " 

" Only till the mutton 's done, sir," replied Gluck, 
" and it 's very brown." 

Then the old gentleman walked into the kitchen, 
and sat himself down on the hob, with the top of his 
cap accommodated up the chimney, for it was a great 
deal too high for the roof. 

"You'll soon dry there, sir," said Gluck, and sat 
down again to turn the mutton. But the old gentle- 
man did not dry there, but went on drip, drip, drip- 
ping among the cinders, and the fire iSzzed and sput- 
tered, and began to look very black and uncomfortable ; 
never was such a cloak ; every fold in it ran like a 
gutter. 

" I beg pardon, sir," said Gluck at length, after 
watching the water spreading in long quicksilver-like 
streams over the floor for a quarter of an hour ; 
" may n't I take your cloak ? " 

" No, thank you," said the old gentleman. 

" Your cap, sir ? " 

" I 'm all right, thank you," said the old gentleman, 
rather gruffly. 

" But — sir — I 'm very sorry," said Gluck, hesitat- 
ingly; " but— really, sir — 3^ou 're putting the fire out." 



10 JOHN RUSKIN. 

" It '11 take longer to do the mutton then," replied 
his visitor, dryly. 

Gluck was very much puzzled by the behavior of 
his guest ; it was such a strange mixture of coolness 
and humility. He turned away at the string medita- 
tively for another five minutes. 

" That mutton looks very nice," said the old gentle- 
man, at length. " Can't you give me a little bit ? " 

" Impossible, sir," said Gluck. 

" I 'm very hungry," continued the old gentleman ; 
" I 've had nothing to eat yesterday, nor to-day. They 
surely could n't miss a bit from the knuckle ! " 

He spoke in so very melancholy a tone that it quite 
melted Gluck's heart. " They promised me one slice 
to-day, sir," said he ; "I can give you that, but not a 
bit more." 

" That 's a good boy," said the old gentleman 
again. 

Then Gluck warmed a plate and sharpened a knife. 
" I don't care if I do get beaten for it," thought he. 
Just as he had cut a large slice out of the mutton, 
there came a tremendous rap at the door. The old 
gentleman jumped off the hob, as if it had suddenly 
become inconveniently warm. Gluck fitted the slice 
into the mutton again, with desperate efforts at ex- 
actitude, and ran to open the door. 

" What did you keep us waiting in the rain for? " 
said Schwartz, as he walked in, throwing his umbrella 
in Gluck's face. 

" Ay ! what for, indeed, you little vagabond ? " said 
Hans, administering an educational box on the ear, as 
he followed his brother into the kitchen. 

" Bless my soul ! " said Schwartz, when he opened 
the door. 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 11 

" Amen," said the little gentleman, who had taken 
his cap off, and was standing in the middle of the 
kitchen, bowing with the utmost possible velocity. 

" Who 's that ? " said Schwartz, catching up a 
rolling-pin, and turning to Gluck with a fierce frown. 

" I don't know, indeed, brother," said Gluck, in 
great terror. 

" How did he get in?" roared Schwartz. 

"My dear brother," said Gluck deprecatingly, "he 
was so very wet ! " 

The rolling-pin was descending on Gluck's head ; 
but, at the instant, the old gentleman interposed his 
conical cap, on which it crashed with a shock that 
shook the water out of it all over the room. What 
was very odd, the rolling-pin no sooner touched the 
cap, than it flew out of Schwartz's hand, spinning 
like a straw in a high wind, and fell into the corner 
at the further end of the room. 

" Who are you, sir? " demanded Schwartz, turning 
upon him. 

" What 's your business ? " snarled Hans. 

" I 'm a poor old man, sir," the little gentleman 
began very modestly, " and I saw your fire through the 
window, and begged shelter for a quarter of an hour." 

" Have the goodness to walk out again, then," said 
Schwartz. " We 've quite enough water in our 
kitchen, without making it a drying-house." 

"It is a cold day to turn an old man out in, sir ; 
look at my gray hairs." They hung down to his 
shoulders, as I told you before. 

" Ay ! " said Hans, " there are enough of them to 
keep you warm. Walk ! " 

" I 'm very, very hungry, sir ; could n't you spare 
me a bit of bread before I go ? " 



12 JOHN RUSKIN. 

" Bread, indeed ! " said Schwartz ; " do you sup- 
pose we 've nothing to do with our bread but to give 
it to such red-nosed fellows as you? " 

"Why don't you sell your feather?" said Hans 
sneeringly. " Out with you." 

" A little bit," said the old gentleman. 

" Be off ! " said Schwartz. 

" Pray, gentlemen." 

" Off, and be hanged ! " cried Hans, seizing him by 
the collar. But he had no sooner touched the old 
gentleman's collar, than away he went after the roll- 
ing-pin, spinning round and round, till he fell into the 
corner on the top of it. Then Schwartz was very 
angry, and ran at the old gentleman to turn him out ; 
but he also had hardly touched him, when away he 
went after Hans and the rolling-pin, and hit his head 
against the wall as he tumbled into the corner. And 
so there they lay, all three. 

Then the old gentleman spun himself round with 
velocity in the opposite direction ; continued to spin 
until his long cloak was all wound neatly about him ; 
clapped his cap on his head, very much on one side 
(for it could not stand upright without going through 
the ceiling), gave an additional twist to his corkscrew 
mustaches, and replied with perfect coolness : " Gen- 
tlemen, I wish you a very good morning. At twelve 
o'clock to-night I '11 call again ; after such a refusal 
of hospitality as I have just experienced, you will not 
be surprised if that visit is the last I ever pay you." 

"If ever I catch you here again," muttered 
Schwartz, coming, half frightened, out of the corner, 
— but before he could finish his sentence, the old 
gentleman had shut the house-door behind him with a 
great bang ; and past the window, at the same instant, 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 13 

drove a wreatli of ragged cloud, that whirled and 
rolled away down the valley in all manner of shapes ; 
turning over and over in the air ; and melting away 
at last in a gush of rain. 

" A very pretty business, indeed, Mr. Gluck ! " said 
Schwartz. " Dish the mutton, sir. If ever I catch 
you at such a trick again — Bless me, why the mut- 
ton 's been cut ! " 

" You promised me one slice, brother, you know," 
said Gluck. 

" Oh ! and you were cutting it hot, I suppose, and 
going to catch all the gravy. It '11 be long before I 
promise you such a thing again. Leave the room, 
sir ; and have the kindness to wait in the coal-cellar 
till I call you." 

Gluck left the room melancholy enough. The bro- 
thers ate as much mutton as they could, locked the 
rest in the cupboard, and proceeded to get very drunk 
after dinner. 

Such a night as it was ! Howling wind and rush- 
ing rain without intermission. The brothers had 
just sense enough left to put up all the shutters, and 
double bar the door, before they went to bed. They 
usually slept in the same room. As the clock struck 
twelve, they were both awakened by a tremendous 
crash. Their door burst open with a violence that 
shook the house from top to bottom. 

" What 's that ? " cried Schwartz, starting up in his 
bed. 

" Only I," said the little gentleman. 

The two brothers sat up on their bolster, and stared 
into the darkness. The room was full of water, and 
by a misty moonbeam, which found its way through a 
hole in the shutter, they could see, in the midst of it, 



14 JOHN RUSKIN. 

an enormous foam globe, spinning round, and bobbing 
up and down like a cork, on wliicb, as on a most 
luxurious cusbion, reclined tbe little old gentleman, 
cap and all. There was plenty of room for it now, 
for tbe roof was off. 

" Sorry to incommode you," said tbeir visitor ironi- 
cally. " I 'm afraid your beds are dampish ; perhaps 
you had better go to your brother's room ; I 've left 
the ceiling on there." 

They required no second admonition, but rushed 
into Gluck's room, wet through, and in an agony of 
terror. 

" You '11 find my card on the kitchen table," the 
old gentleman called after them. " Remember, the 
last visit." 

" Pray Heaven it may be ! " said Schwartz, shud- 
dering. And the foam globe disappeared. 

Dawn came at last, and the two brothers looked 
out of Gluck's little window in the morning. The 
Treasure Valley was one mass of ruin and desolation. 
The inundation had swept away trees, crops, and 
cattle, and left, in their stead, a waste of red sand 
and gray mud. The two brothers crept, shivering 
and horror-struck, into the kitchen. The water had 
gutted the whole first floor : corn, money, almost every 
movable thing had been swept away, and there was 
left only a small white card on the kitchen table. On 
it, in large, breezy, long-legged letters, were engraved 
the words : — 

SOUTHWEST WIND, ESQUIRE. . 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 15 

n. 

Southwest Wind, Esquire, was as good as his word. 
After the momentous visit above related, he entered 
the Treasure Valley no more ; and, what was worse, 
he had so much influence with his relations, the West 
Winds in general, and used it so effectually, that they 
all adopted a similar line of conduct. So no rain 
fell in the valley from one year's end to another. 
Though everything remained green and flourishing 
in the plains below, the inheritance of the Three 
Brothers was a desert. What had once been the 
richest soil in the kingdom became a shifting heap 
of red sand ; and the brothers, unable longer to con- 
tend with the adverse skies, abandoned their valueless 
patrimony in despair, to seek some means of gaining 
a livelihood among the cities and people of the plains. 
All their money was gone, and they had nothing left 
but some curious, old-fashioned pieces of gold plate, 
the last remnants of their ill-gotten wealth. 

" Suppose we turn goldsmiths ? " said Schwartz to 
Hans, as they entered the large city. " It is a good 
knave's trade : we can put a great deal of coj)per into 
the gold, without any one's finding it out." 

The thought was agreed to be a very good one ; 
they hired a furnace, and turned goldsmiths. But 
two slight circumstances affected their trade : the first, 
that people did not approve of the coppered gold ; the 
second, that the two elder brothers, whenever they 
had sold anything, used to leave little Gluck to mind 
the furnace, and go and drink out the money in the 
ale-house next door. So they melted all their gold, 
without making money enough to buy more, and were 
at last reduced to one large drinking-mug, which an 



16 JOHN nUSKIN. 

uncle of his had given to little Gluck, and which he 
was very fond of, and would not have parted with for 
the world ; though he never drank anything out of it 
but milk and water. The mug was a very odd mug 
to look at. The handle was formed of two wreaths 
of flowing golden hair, so finely spun that it looked 
more like silk than like metal, and these wreaths de- 
scended into, and mixed with, a beard and whiskers, 
of the same exquisite workmanship, which surrounded 
and decorated a very fierce little face, of the reddest 
gold imaginable, right in the front of the mug, with 
a pair of eyes in it which seemed to command its 
whole circumference. It was impossible to drink out 
of the mug without being subjected to an intense gaze 
out of the side of these eyes ; and Schwartz positively 
averred that once, after emptying it full of Rhenish 
seventeen times, he had seen them wink ! When it 
came to the mug's turn to be made into spoons, it half 
broke poor little Gluck's heart ; but the brothers only 
laughed at him, tossed the mug into the melting-pot, 
and staggered out to the ale-house ; leaving him, as 
usual, to pour the gold into bars, when it was all 
ready. 

When they were gone, Gluck took a farewell look 
at his old friend in the melting-pot. The flowing hair 
was all gone ; nothing remained but the red nose, and 
the sparkling eyes, which looked more malicious than 
ever. " And no wonder," thought Gluck, " after being 
treated in that way." He sauntered disconsolately to 
the window, and sat himself down to catch the fresh 
evening air, and escape the hot breath of the furnace. 
Now this window commanded a direct view of the 
range of mountains which, as I told you before, over- 
hung the Treasure Valley, and more especially of the 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 17 

peak from which fell the Golden River. It was just 
at the close of the clay, and, when Gluck sat down at 
the window, he saw the rocks of the mountain-tops, 
all crimson and purple with the sunset ; and there 
were bright tongues of fiery cloud burning and quiver- 
ing about them ; and the river, brighter than all, fell, 
in a waving column of pure gold, from precipice to 
precipice, with the double arch of a broad purple rain- 
bow stretched across it, flushing and fading alternately 
in the wreaths of spray. 

" Ah ! " said Gluck aloud, after he had looked at it 
for a little while, " if that river were really all gold, 
what a nice thing it would be ! " 

" No, it would n't, Gluck," said a clear, metallic 
voice, close at his ear. 

" Bless me, what's that?" exclaimed Gluck, jump- 
ing up. There was nobody there. He looked round 
the room, and under the table, and a great many times 
behind him, but there was certainly nobody there, and 
he sat down again at the window. This time he did n't 
s]3eak, but he could n't help thinking again that it 
would be very convenient if the river were really all 
gold. 

" Not at all, my boy," said the same voice, louder 
than before. 

" Bless me ! " said Gluck again, " what is that ? " 
He looked again into all the corners and cupboards, 
and then began turning round and round, as fast as 
he could, in the middle of the room, thinking there 
was somebody behind him, when the same voice struck 
again on his ear. It was singing now very merrily 
" Lala-lira-la ; " no words, only a soft running effer- 
vescent melody, something like that of a kettle on the 
boil. Gluck looked out of the window. No, it was 



18 JOHN RUSKIN. 

certainly in the house. Upstairs, and downstairs. 
No, it was certainly in that very room, coming in 
quicker time and clearer notes every moment. " Lala- 
lira-la." All at once it struck Gluck that it sounded 
louder near the furnace. He ran to the opening and 
looked in ; yes, he saw right, it seemed to be coming, 
not only out of the furnace, but out of the pot. He 
uncovered it, and ran back in a great fright, for the 
pot was certainly singing ! He stood in the farthest 
corner of the room, with his hands up, and his mouth 
open, for a minute or two, when the singing stopped, 
and the voice became clear and proniinciative. 

" Hollo ! " said the voice. 

Gluck made no answer. 

" Hollo ! Gluck, my boy," said the pot again. 

Gluck summoned all his energies, walked straight 
up to the crucible, drew it out of the furnace, and 
looked in. The gold was all melted, and its surface 
as smooth and polished as a river ; but instead of its 
reflecting little Gluck's head, as he looked in, he saw 
meeting his glance, from beneath the gold, the red 
nose and the sharp eyes of his old friend of the mug, 
a thousand times redder and sharper than ever he had 
seen them in his life. 

" Come, Gluck, my boy," said the voice out of the 
pot again, " I 'm all right ; pour me out." 

But Gluck was too much astonished to do anything 
of the kind. 

" Pour me out, I say," said the voice rather gruffly. 

Still Gluck could n't move. 

" Will you pour me out ? " said the voice passion- 
ately. " I 'm too hot." 

By a violent effort, Gluck recovered the use of his 
limbs, took hold of the crucible, and sloped it so as to 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 19 

pour out the gold. But instead of a liquid stream, 
there came out, first, a pair of pretty little yellow legs, 
tlien some coat-tails, then a pair of arms stuck akimbo, 
and, finally, the well-known head of his friend the 
mug ; all which articles, uniting as they rolled out, 
stood up energetically on the floor, in the shape of a 
little golden dwarf, about a foot and a half high. 

" That 's right ! " said the dwarf, stretching out 
first his legs, and then his arms, and then shaking his 
head up and down, and as far round as it would go, 
for five minutes, without stopping; apparently with 
the view of ascertaining if he were quite correctly put 
together, while Gluck stood contemplating him in 
speechless amazement. He was dressed in a slashed 
doublet of spun gold, so fine in its texture that the 
prismatic colors gleamed over it, as if on a surface of 
mother-of-pearl ; and over this brilliant doublet his hair 
and beard fell full half-way to the ground, in waving 
curls, so exquisitely delicate that Gluck could hardly 
tell where they ended ; they seemed to melt into air. 
The features of the face, however, were by no means 
finished with the same delicacy ; they were rather 
coarse, slightly inclining to coppery in complexion, 
and indicative, in expression, of a very pertinacious 
and intractable disposition in their small proprietor. 
When the dwarf had finished his self-examination, he 
turned his small, sharp eyes full on Gluck, and stared 
at him deliberately for a minute or two. " No, it 
would n't, Gluck, my boy," said the little man. 

This was certainly rather an abrupt and unconnected 
mode of commencing conversation. It might indeed 
be supposed to refer to the course of Gluck's thoughts, 
which had first produced the dwarf's observations out 
of the pot ; but whatever it referred to, Gluck had no 
inclination to dispute the dictum. 



20 JOHN RUSKIN. 

"Wouldn't it, sir?" said Gluck, very mildly and 
submissively indeed. 

" No," said the dwarf conclusively. " No, it 
wouldn't." And with that, the dwarf pulled his cap 
hard over his brows, and took two turns of three feet 
long, up and down the room, lifting his legs very high, 
and setting them down very hard. This pause gave 
time for Gluck to collect his thoughts a little, and, 
seeing no great reason to view his diminutive visitor 
with dread, and feeling his curiosity overcome his 
amazement, he ventured on a question of peculiar 
delicacy. 

" Pray, sir," said Gluck, rather hesitatingly, " were 
you my mug ? " 

On which the little man turned sharp round, walked 
straight up'to Gluck, and drew himself up to his full 
height. " I," said the little man, " am the King of 
the Golden River." Whereupon he turned about 
again, and took two more turns, some six feet long, 
in order to allow time for the consternation which 
this announcement produced in his auditor to evap- 
orate. After which he again walked up to Gluck and 
stood still, as if expecting some comment on his com- 
munication. 

Gluck determined to say something, at all events. 
" I hope your Majesty is very well," said Gluck. 

" Listen ! " said the little man, deigning no reply 
to this polite inquiry. " I am the King of what you 
mortals call the Golden River. The shape you saw 
me in was owing to the malice of a stronger king, 
from whose enchantments you have this instant freed 
me. What I have seen of you, and your conduct to 
your wicked brothers, renders me willing to serve 
you ; therefore attend to what I tell you. Whoever 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER, 21 

shall climb to the top of that moimtain from which 
you see the Golden River issue, and shall cast into the 
stream at its source three drops of holy water, for him, 
and for him only, the river shall turn to gold. But 
no one failing in his first can succeed in a second at- 
tempt ; and if any one shall cast unholy water into 
the river, it will overwhelm him, and he will become 
a black stone." So saying, the King of the Golden 
River turned away, and deliberately walked into the 
centre of the hottest flame of the furnace. His figure 
became red, white, transparent, dazzling, — a blaze of 
intense light, — rose, trembled, and disappeared. The 
King of the Golden River had evaporated. 

" Oh ! " cried poor Gluck, running to look up the 
chimney after him ; "oh dear, dear, dear me ! My 
mug ! my mug ! my mug I " 



in. 

The King of the Golden River had hardly made 
his extraordinary exit before Hans and Schwartz came 
roaring into the house, very savagely drunk. The 
discovery of the total loss of their last piece of plate 
had the effect of sobering them just enough to enable 
them to stand over Gluck, beating him very steadily 
for a quarter of an hour ; at the expiration of which 
period they dropped into a couple of chairs, and re- 
quested to know what he had got to say for himself. 
Gluck told them his story, of which of course they did 
not believe a word. They beat him again, till their 
arms were tired, and staggered to bed. In the morn- 
ing, however, the steadiness with which he adhered to 
his story obtained him some degree of credence ; the 
immediate consequence of which was, that the two 



22 JOHN RUSKIN. 

brothers, after wrangling a long time on the knotty- 
question which of them should try his fortune first, 
drew their swords, and began fighting. The noise of 
the fray alarmed the neighbors, who, finding they 
could not pacify the combatants, sent for the con- 
stable. 

Hans, on hearing this, contrived to escape, and hid 
himself ; but Schwartz was taken before the magis- 
trate, fined for breaking the peace, and having drunk 
out his last penny the evening before, was thrown 
into prison till he should pay. 

When Hans heard this, he was much delighted, 
and determined to set out immediately for the Golden 
River. How to get the holy water was the question. 
He went to the priest, but the priest could not give 
any holy water to so abandoned a character. So 
Hans went to vespers in the evening for the first 
time in his life, and, under pretence of crossing him- 
self, stole a cupful, and returned home in triumph. 

Next morning he got up before the sun rose, put 
the holy water into a strong flask, and two bottles of 
wine and some meat in a basket, slung them over his 
back, took his alpine staff in his hand, and set off 
for the mountains. 

On his way out of the town he had to pass the 
prison, and as he looked in at the windows, whom 
should he see but Schwartz himself peeping out of 
the bars, and looking very disconsolate. 

" Good morning, brother," said Hans ; " have you 
any message for the King of the Golden Eiver ? " 

Schwartz gnashed his teeth with rage, and shook 
the bars with all his strength ; but Hans only laughed 
at him, and advising him to make himself comfort- 
able till he came back again, shouldered his basket, 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 23 

sliook the bottle of holy water in Schwartz's face 
till it frothed again, and marched off in the highest 
spirits in the world. 

It was, indeed, a morning that might have made 
any one happy, even with no Golden River to seek 
for. Level lines of dewy mist lay stretched along 
the valley, out of which rose the massy mountains, — 
their lower cliffs in pale gray shadow, hardly distin- 
guishable from the floating va23or, but gradually 
ascending till they caught the sunlight, which ran 
in sharp touches of ruddy color along the angular 
crags, and pierced, in long level rays, through their 
fringes of spear-like pine. Far above shot up red 
splintered masses of castellated rock, jagged and 
shivered into myriads of fantastic forms, with here 
and there a streak of sunlit snow, traced down their 
chasms like a line of forked lightning ; and, far be- 
yond, and far above all these, fainter than the morn- 
ing cloud, but purer and changeless, slept, in the blue 
sky, the utmost peaks of the eternal snow. 

The Golden River, which sprang from one of the 
lower and snowies s elevations, was now nearly in 
shadow ; all but the uppermost jets of sj^ray, which 
rose like slow smoke above the undulating line of 
the cataract, and floated away in feeble wreaths upon 
the morning wiud. 

On this object, and on this alone, Hans's eyes and 
thoughts were fixed; forgetting the distance he had 
to traverse, he set off at an imprudent rate of walk- 
ing, which greatly exhausted him before he had 
scaled the first range of the green and low hills. He 
was, moreover, surprised, on surmounting them, to 
find that a large glacier, of whose existence, notwith- 
standing his previous knowledge of the mountains. 



24 JOHN RUSKIN. 

lie had been absolutely ignorant, lay between Mm 
and the source of the Golden River. He entered on 
it with the boldness of a practised mountaineer ; yet 
he thought he had never traversed so strange or so 
dangerous a glacier in his life. The ice was exces- 
sively slippery, and out of all its chasms came wild 
somids of gushing water ; not monotonous or low, 
but changeful and loud, rising occasionally into drift- 
ing passages of wild melody, then breaking off into 
short, melancholy tones, or sudden shrieks, resem- 
bling those of human voices in distress or pain. The 
ice was broken into thousands of confused shapes, 
but none, Hans thought, like the ordinary forms of 
splintered ice. There seemed a curious exj^ression 
about all their outlines, — a perpetual resemblance 
to living features, distorted and scornful. Myriads 
of deceitful shadows and lurid lights played and 
floated about and through the pale blue pinnacles, 
dazzling and confusing the sight of the traveller ; 
while his ears grew dull and his head giddy with 
the constant gush and roar of the concealed waters. 
These painful circumstances increased upon him as 
he advanced ; the ice crashed and yawned into fresh 
chasms at his feet, tottering spires nodded around 
him, and fell thundering across his path ; and though 
he had repeatedly faced these dangers on the most 
terrific glaciers, and in the wildest weather, it was 
with a new and oppressive feeling of panic terror 
that he leaped the last chasm, and flung himself, 
exhausted and shuddering, on the firm turf of the 
mountain. 

He had been compelled to abandon his basket of 
food, which became a perilous incumbrance on the 
glacier, and had now no means of refreshing himself 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 25 

but by breaking off and eating some o£ the pieces of 
ice. Tliis, however, relieved his thirst ; an hour's re- 
pose recruited his hardy frame, and, with the indomit- 
able spirit of avarice, he resumed his laborious journey. 

His way now lay straight up a ridge of bare, red 
rocks, without a blade of grass to ease the foot or 
a projecting angle to afford an inch of shade from 
the south sun. It was past noon, and the rays beat 
intensely n-pon the steep path, while the whole at- 
mosphere was motionless, and penetrated with heat. 
Intense thirst was soon added to the bodily fatigue 
with which Hans was now afflicted; glance after 
glance he cast on the flask of water which hung at 
his belt. " Three drops are enough," at last thought 
he ; "I may, at least, cool my lips with it." 

He opened the flask, and was raising it to his lips, 
when his eye fell on an object lying on the rock 
beside him ; he thought it moved. It was a small 
dog, apparently in the last agony of death from 
thirst. Its tongue was out, its jaws dry, its limbs 
extended lifelessly, and a swarm of black ants were 
crawling about its lips and throat. Its eye moved 
to the bottle which Hans held in his hand. He 
raised it, drank, spurned the animal with his foot, 
and passed on. And he did not know how it was, 
but he thought that a strange shadow had suddenly 
come across the blue sky. 

The path became steeper and more rugged every 
moment ; and the high hill air, instead of refreshing 
him, seemed to throw his blood into a fever. The 
noise of the hill cataracts sounded like mockery in his 
ears ; they were all distant, and his thirst increased 
every moment. Another hour passed, and he again 
looked down to the flask at his side; it was half 



26 JOHN RUSKIN. 

empty, but there was mucli more than three drops in 
it. He stopped to open it, and again, as he did so, 
something moved in the path above him. It was a 
fair child, stretched nearly lifeless on the rock, its 
breast heaving with thirst, its eyes closed, and its lips 
parched and burning. Hans eyed it deliberately, 
drank, and passed on. And a dark gray cloud came 
over the sun, and long snake-like shadows crept up 
along the mountain-sides. Hans struggled on. The 
sun was sinking, but its descent seemed to bring no 
coolness ; the leaden weight of the dead air pressed 
upon his brow and heart, but the goal was near. He 
saw the cataract of the Golden River springing from 
the hillside, scarcely five hundred feet above him. 
He paused for a moment to breathe, and sprang on to 
complete his task. 

At this instant a faint cry fell on his ear. He 
turned, and saw a gray-haired old man extended on 
the rocks. His eyes were sunk, his features deadly 
pale, and gathered into an expression of despair. 
" Water ! " he stretched his arms to Hans, and cried 
feebly, — " Water ! I am dying." 

" I have none," replied Hans ; " thou hast had thy 
share of life. " He strode over the prostrate body, 
and darted on. And a flash of blue lightning rose out 
of the east, shaped like a sword ; it shook thrice over 
the whole heaven, and left it dark with one heavy, 
impenetrable shade. The sun was setting ; it plunged 
toward the horizon like a red-hot ball. 

The roar of the Golden River rose on Hans's ear. 
He stood at the brink of the chasm through which it 
ran. Its waves were filled with the red glory of the 
sunset : they shook their crests like tongues of fire, 
and flashes of bloody light gleamed along their foam. 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 27 

Their sound came miglitier and mightier on his senses ; 
his brain grew giddy with the prolonged thunder. 
Shuddering, he drew the flask from his girdle, and 
hurled it into the centre of the torrent. As he did so, 
an icy chill shot through his limbs ; he staggered, 
shrieked, and fell. The waters closed over his cry. 
And the moaning of the river rose wildly into the 
night, as it gushed over 



IV. 

Poor little Gluck waited very anxiously alone in the 
house for Hans's return. Finding he did not come 
back, he was terribly frightened, and went and told 
Schwartz in the prison all that had happened. Then 
Schwartz was very much pleased, and said that Hans 
must certainly have been turned into a black stone, 
and he should have all the gold to himself. But 
Gluck was very sorry, and cried all night. When he 
got up in the morning, there was no bread in the 
house, nor any money ; so Gluck went and hired him- 
self to another goldsmith, and he worked so hard, and 
so neatly, and so long every day, that he soon got 
money enough together to pay his brother's fine, and 
he went and gave it all to Schwartz, and Schwartz got 
out of prison. Then Schwartz was quite pleased, and 
said he should have some of the gold of the river. 
But Gluck only begged he would go and see what had 
become of Hans. 

Now when Schwartz had heard that Hans had stolen 
the holy water, he thought to himself that such a j)ro- 
ceeding might not be considered altogether correct by 
the King of the Golden Eiver, and determined to man- 



28 JOHN RUSKIN. 

age matters better. So lie took some more of Gluck's 
money, and went to a bad priest, who gave bim some 
holy water very readily for it. Then Schwartz was 
sure it was all quite right. So Schwartz got up early 
in the morning before the sun rose, and took some 
bread and wine in a basket, and put his holy water in 
a flask, and set off for the mountains. Like his 
brother, he was much surprised at the sight of the 
glacier, and had great difficulty in crossing it, even 
after leaving his basket behind him. The day was 
cloudless, but not bright : a heavy purple haze was 
hanging over the sky, and the hills looked lowering 
and gloomy. And as Schwartz climbed the steep 
rock path, the thirst came upon him, as it had upon 
his brother, until he lifted his flask to his lips to 
drink. Then he saw the fair child lying near him on 
the rocks, and it cried to him, and moaned for water. 

" Water, indeed, " said Schwartz ; " I have n't half 
enough for myself," and passed on. And as he went 
he thought the sunbeams grew more dim, and he saw 
a low bank of black cloud rising out of the west ; and 
when he had climbed for another hour the thirst over- 
came him again, and he would have drunk. Then he 
saw the old man lying before him on the path, and 
heard him cry out for water. " Water, indeed," said 
Schwartz ; " I have n't half enough for myself," and 
on he went. 

Then again the light seemed to fade from before his 
eyes, and he looked up, and, behold, a mist, of the 
color of blood, had come over the sun ; and the bank 
of black cloud had risen very high, and its edges were 
tossing and tumbling like the waves of the angry sea. 
And they cast long shadows, which flickered over 
Schwartz's path. 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 29 

Then Schwartz climbed for another hour, and again 
his thirst returned ; and as he lifted his flask to his 
lips, he thought he saw his brother Hans lying ex- 
hausted on the path before him, and, as he gazed, the 
figure stretched its arms to him, and cried for water. 
" Ha, ha," laughed Schwartz, " are you there ? Re- 
member the prison bars, my boy. Water, indeed ! do 
you suppose I carried it all the way up here for you f " 
And he strode over the figure ; yet, as he passed, he 
thought he saw a strange expression of mockery about 
its lips. And, when he had gone a few yards farther, 
he looked back ; but the figure was not there. 

And a sudden horror came over Schwartz, he knew 
not why ; but the thirst for gold prevailed over his 
fear, and he rushed on. And the bank of black cloud 
rose to the zenith, and out of it came bursts of spiry 
lightning, and waves of darkness seemed to heave and 
float between their flashes, over the whole heavens. 
And the sky where the sun was setting was all level, 
and like a lake of blood ; and a strong wind came out 
oi that sky, tearing its crimson clouds into fragments, 
and scattering them far into the darkness. And when 
Schwartz stood by the brink of the Golden River, its 
waves were black like thunder-clouds, but their foam 
was like fire ; and the roar of the waters below and the 
thunder above met, as he cast the flask into the stream. 
And, as he did so, the lightning glared in his eyes, 
and the earth gave way beneath him, and the waters 
closed over his cry. And the moaning of the river 
rose wildly into the night, as it gushed over 



30 JOHN RUSKIN. 

V. 

Wlien Gluck found that Schwartz did not come 
back, he was very sorry, and did not know what to do. 
He had no money, and was obliged to go and hire him- 
self again to the goldsmith, who worked him very hard, 
and gave him very little money. So, after a month or 
two, Gluck grew tired, and made up his mind to go 
and try his fortune with the Golden River. "The 
little king looked very kind," thought he. " I don't 
think he will turn me into a black stone." So he 
went to the priest, and the priest gave him some holy 
water as soon as he asked for it. Then Gluck took 
some bread in his basket, and the bottle of water, and 
set off very early for the mountains. 

If the glacier had occasioned a great deal of fatigue 
to his brothers, it was twenty times worse for him, 
who was neither so strong nor so practised on the 
mountains. He had several very bad falls, lost his 
basket and bread, and was very much frightened at 
the strange noises under the ice. He lay a long time 
to rest on the grass, after he had got over, and began 
to climb the hill just in the hottest part of the day. 
When he had climbed for an hour, he got dreadfully 
thirsty, and was going to drink like his brothers, when 
he saw an old man coming down the path above him, 
looking very feeble, and leaning on a staff. " My 
son," said the old man, " I am faint with thirst ; give 
me some of that water." Then Gluck looked at him, 
and when he saw that he was pale and weary, he gave 
him the water ; " Only pray don't drink it all," said 
Gluck. But the old man drank a great deal, and 
gave him back the bottle two thirds empty. Then he 
bade him good speed, and Gluck went on again mer- 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 31 

rily. And the path became easier to his feet, and two 
or three blades of grass appeared upon it, and some 
grasshoppers began singing on the bank beside it ; 
and Gluck thought he had never heard such merry- 
singing. 

Then he went on for another hour, and the thirst 
increased on him so that he thought he should be 
forced to drink. But, as he raised the flask, he saw 
a little child lying panting by the roadside, and it 
cried out piteously for water. Then Gluck struggled 
with himself and determined to bear the thirst a little 
longer ; and he put the bottle to the child's lips, and 
it drank it all but a few drops. Then it smikd on 
him and got up, and ran down the hill ; and Gluck 
looked after it, till it became as small as a little star, 
and then turned, and began climbing again. And 
then there were all kinds of sweet flowers growing on 
the rocks, bright green moss, with pale pink starry 
flowers, and soft-belled gentians, more blue than the 
sky at its deepest, and pure white transparent lilies. 
And crimson and purple butterflies darted hither and 
thither, and the sky sent down such pure light that 
Gluck had never felt so happy in his life. 

Yet, when he had climbed for another hour, his 
thirst became intolerable again ; and, when he looked 
at his bottle, he saw that there were only five or six 
drops left in it, and he could not venture to drink. 
And as he was hanging the flask to his belt again, he 
saw a little dog lying on the rocks, gasping for breath, 
— just as Hans had seen it on the day of his ascent. 
And Gluck stopped and looked at it, and then at the 
Golden River, not five hundred yards above him ; and 
he thought of the dwarf's words, " that no one coidd 
succeed, except in his first attempt ; " and he tried to 



32 JOHN RUSKIN. 

pass the dog, but it whined piteously, and Gluck 
stopped again. " Poor beastie," said Gluck, " it '11 be 
dead when I come down again, if I don't help it." 
Then he looked closer and closer at it, and its eye 
turned on him so mournfully that he could not stand 
it. " Confound the King and his gold too," said 
Gluck ; and he opened the flask, and poured all the 
water into the dog's mouth. 

The dog sprang up and stood on its hind legs. Its 
tail disappeared, its ears became long, longer, silky, 
golden; its nose became very red, its eyes became 
very twinkling ; in three seconds the dog was gone, 
and before Gluck stood his old acquaintance, the 
King of the Golden Eiver. 

" Thank you," said the monarch ; " but don't be 
frightened, it 's all right;" for Gluck showed mani- 
fest symptoms of consternation at this unlooked-for 
reply to his last observation. " Why did n't you come 
before," continued the dwarf, " instead of sending me 
those rascally brothers of yours, for me to have the 
trouble of turning into stones ? Very hard stones they 
make, too." 

"Oh dear me ! " said Gluck, *' have you really been 
so cruel? " 

" Cruel ? " said the dwarf ; " they poured unholy 
water into my stream ; do you suppose I 'm going to 
allow that?" 

"Why," said Gluck, " I am sure, sir, — your Ma- 
jesty, I mean, — they got the water out of the church 
font." 

" Very probably," replied the dwarf ; " but," and 
his countenance grew stern as he spoke, " the water 
which has been refused to the cry of the weary and 
dying is unholy, though it had been blessed by every 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 33 

saint in heaven ; and tlie water wliich is found in the 
vessel of mercy is holy, though it had been defiled 
with corpses." 

So saying, the dwarf stooped and plucked a lily 
that grew at his feet. On its white leaves hung three 
drops of clear dew, and the dwarf shook them into the 
flask which Gluck held in his hand. " Cast these into 
the river," he said, " and descend on the other side 
of the mountains into the Treasure Valley. And so 
good speed." 

As he spoke, the figure of the dwarf became indis- 
tinct. The playing colors of his robe formed them- 
selves into a prismatic mist of dewy light ; he stood 
for an instant veiled with them as with the belt of a 
broad rainbow. The colors grew faint, the mist rose 
into the air ; the monarch had evaporated. 

And Gluck climbed to the brink of the Golden 
River, and its waves were as clear as crystal and as 
brilliant as the sun. And when he cast the three 
drops of dew into the stream, there opened where they 
fell a small circular whirlpool, into which the waters 
descended with a musical noise. 

Gluck stood watching it for some time, very much 
disappointed, because not only the river was not 
turned into gold, but its waters seemed much dimin- 
ished in quantity. Yet he obeyed his friend the 
dwarf, and descended the other side of the mountains, 
toward the Treasure Valley; and, as he went, he 
thought he heard the noise of water working its way 
under the ground. And when he came in sight of 
the Treasure Valley, behold, a river, like the Golden 
River, was springing from a new cleft of the rocks 
above it, and was flowing in innumerable streams 
among the dry heaps of red sand. 



34 JOHN RUSKIN. 

And as Gluck gazed, fresh grass sprang beside the 
new streams, and creeping plants grew, and climbed 
among the moistening soil. Young flowers opened 
suddenly along the river sides, as stars leap out when 
twilight is deepening, and thickets of myrtle, and ten- 
drils of vine, cast lengthening shadows over the valley 
as they grew. And thus the Treasure Valley became 
a garden again, and the inheritance, which had been 
lost by cruelty, was regained by love. 

And Gluck went and dwelt in the valley, and the 
poor were never driven from his door ; so that his 
barns became full of corn, and his house of treasure. 
And, for him, the river had, according to the dwarf's 
promise, become a River of Gold. 

And to this day the inhabitants of the valley point 
out the place where the three drops of holy dew were 
cast into the stream, and trace the course of the Golden 
River under the ground, until it emerges in the Treas- 
ure Valley. And at the top of the cataract of the 
Golden River are still to be seen two black stones, 
round which the waters howl mournfully every day at 
sunset ; and these stones are still called, by the people 
of the valley, 







J<3 




THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born October 25, 
1800. His father, Zachary Macaulay, was an earnest ad- 
vocate in England of the emancipation of slaves in the 
English colonies in the West Indies, and ardently desired 
to see his son in public life. Macaulay had a brilliant 
career in the University of Cambridge, and after gradua- 
tion he appeared first as a champion of the anti-slavery 
cause, but quickly turned to literature, and wrote an essay 
on Milton which brought him renown. He did not forsake 
the notion of public life, however, and was sent to Parha- 
ment when he was thirty-two years old. He continued to 
serve either in Parliament or in ojB&ce under government 
from 1832 to 1856. 

During that time he made many speeches, and was con- 
nected with many great movements, but he left his mark in 
English history, not as a statesman, but as a splendid writer 
of prose, and of some striking poems. His essays covered 
a large array of subjects in English literature, history, and 
biography, and were as popular as novels. He wrote a 
History of England, which will be read by many for its 
attractive style, and its rapid sketches of persons and scenes, 
even when the readers may think that Macaulay wrote 
with his mind full of partisan beliefs as to the people about 
whom he was writing. 

He was a remarkable talker. His memory was very 
capacious, and when any topic was started he could pour 



36 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

out a steady stream of most interesting reminiscence on the 
subject. An English wit, Sydney Smith, who also had a 
reputation as a brilliant talker, used to be greatly annoyed 
when he was one of the same company ; he could scarcely 
get in a word. Later, when Macaulay had lost some of his 
superabundant health, there was more opportunity for 
others, and Smith said one day: "Macaulay is improved! 
Yes, Macaulay is improved! I have observed in him of 
late flashes — of silence." He was raised to the peerage in 
1857, and died December 28, 1859. 

The poetry by which Macaulay is known is wholly of 
one kind. With his historical tastes, and his love of elo- 
quence, he conceived the notion of turning into ballad form 
some of the stories of Roman history. He chose an easy, 
swinging measure, and rushed along in it with the rich dic- 
tion which, as in his history, made his readers listen en- 
chanted, and unmindful of any lapses in accuracy or coloring 
of simple matters. The main group of poems which he 
wrote was called Lays of Ancient Rome, and it is the first 
one in the group which is here given. 



HORATIUS. 

A LAY MADE ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE CITY CCCLX. 

The foundation of Rome is estimated to have been about 753 
years before Christ. According to legendary history, there was 
a dynasty of Etruscan kings, Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius, 
and Tarquinius Superbus, that ruled Rome successively; but the 
tyranny of the house became so hateful that the people finally 
banished the Tarquinian family and set up a republic, governed 
by two magistrates called consuls, chosen annually. This was 
in the year 244. The Tarquinian family attempted to return to 
power, first by intrigue and then by open war, making an alliance 
with Porsena, who ruled over Etruria. The ballad that follows 
narrates the exploit of Horatius when the city was defending 
itself ; but it is supposed to have been made a hundred and 
twenty years after the war which it celebrates, and just before 
the taking of Rome by the Gauls. " The author," says Macaulay, 
"seems to have been an honest citizen, proud of the military 
glory of his country, sick of the disputes of factions, and much 
given to pining after good old times which had never really 
existed." 

1 

Laks Poksena of Clusium 
By the Nine Gods he swore 

That the great house of Tarqiiin 
Should suffer wrong no more. 
5 By the Nine Gods he swore it, 
And named a trysting day, 

1. Lars in the Etruscan tongue signified chieftain. Clusium is 
the modern Chiusi. 

2. The Romans had a tradition that there were nine great 
Etruscan gods. 



38 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

And bade his messengers ride forth, 
East and west and south and north, 
To summon his array. 

2 
10 East and west and south and north 
The messengers ride fast. 
And tower and town and cottage 

Have heard the trumpet's blast. 
Shame on the false Etruscan 
15 Who lingers in his home. 
When Porsena of Clusium 
Is on the march for Rome. 

3 

The horsemen and the footmen 
Are pouring in amain 
20 From many a stately market-place, 
From many a fruitful plain ; 
From many a lonely hamlet, 

Which, hid by beech and pine. 
Like an eagle's nest, hangs on the crest 
25 Of purple Apennine ; 

4 
From lordly Volaterrse, 

Where scowls the far-famed hold 



26. Volaterrce, modern Volterra, 

27. " The situation of the Etruscan towns is one of the most 
striking characteristics of Tuscan scenery. Many of them oc- 
cupy surfaces of table-land surrounded by a series of gullies not 
visible from a distance. The traveller thus may be a whole day 
reaching a place which in the morning may have seemed to him 
but a little way off." — Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria. 



HORATIUS. 39 

Piled by the hands of giants 

For godlike kings of old ; 
30 From seagirt Populonia, 

Whose sentinels descry 
Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops 

Fringing the southern sky ; 

5 
From the proud mart of Pisse, ' 

35 Queen of the western waves, 
Where ride Massilia's triremes 

Heavy with fair-haired slaves ; 
From where sweet Clanis wanders 
Through corn and vines and flowers ; 
40 From where Cortona lifts to heaven 
Her diadem of towers. 

6 

Tall are the oaks whose acorns 

Drop in dark Auser's rill ; 
Fat are the stags that champ the boughs 
45 Of the Ciminian hill ; 
Beyond all streams Clitumnus 

Is to the herdsman dear ; 
Best of all pools the fowler loves 

The great Yolsinian mere. 

34. Pisce, now Pisa. 

36. Massilia, the ancient Marseilles, which originally was a 
Greek colony and a great commercial centre. 

37. The fair-haired slaves were doubtless slaves from Gaul, 
bought and sold by the Greek merchants. 

38. Clanis, the modern la Chicana. 

43. The Auser was a tributary stream of the river Artio. 

46. Clitumnus, Clituno in modern times. 

49. Volsinian mere, now known as Lago di Bolsena. 



40 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

7 
50 But now no stroke of woodman 
Is heard by Auser's rill ; 
No hunter tracks the stag's green path 

Up the Ciminian hill ; 
Unwatched along Clitumnus 
55 Grazes the milk-white steer ; 
Unharmed the waterfowl may dip 
In the Yolsinian mere. 

8 
The harvests of Arretium, 
This year, old men shall reap, 
60 This year, young boys in Umbro 

Shall plunge the struggling sheep ; 
And in the vats of Luna, 

This year, the must shall foam 
Round the white feet of laughing girls 
65 Whose sires have marched to Rome. 

9 
There be thirty chosen prophets, 

The wisest of the land, 
Who alway by Lars Porsena 

Both morn and evening stand : 

58. Arretium, now Arezzo. 

60. Umhro, the river Omhrone. All this region was occupied 
by the Etruscans, and, since the men had gone to fight Rome, 
only the old and very young would be left to carry on the work 
of the country. 

QQ. The Etruscan religion was one of sorcery, and their pro- 
phets were augurs who sought to know the will of the gods 
by various outward signs ; such as the flight of birds, the direc- 
tion of lightning, and the mystic writings of the prophets be- 
fore them. 



HORATIUS. 41 

70 Evening and morn the Thirty 
Have turned the verses o'er, 
Traced from the right on linen white 
By mighty seers of yore. 

10 • 

And with one voice the Thirty 
75 Have their glad answer given : 
" Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena ; 

Go forth, beloved of Heaven : 
Go, and return in glory 
To Clusium's royal dome ; 
80 And hang round Nurscia's altars 
The golden shields of Rome." 

11 

And now hath every city 

Sent up her tale of men : 
The foot are fourscore thousand, 
85 The horse are thousands ten. 
Before the gates of Sutrium 

Is met the great array. 
A proud man was Lars Porsena 

Upon the trysting day. 

12 

90 For all the Etruscan armies 

Were ranged beneath his eye, 

72. The Etruscan writing was from right to left. 

83. Tale of men. Compare Milton's lines in U Allegro, — 

'* And every shepherd tells his tale 
Under the hawthorn, in the dale." 

The tally which we keep is a kindred word. 
86. Sutrium is Sutri to-day. 



42 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

And many a banished Roman, 

And many a stont ally; 
And with a mighty following 
95 To join the muster came 
The Tusculan Mamilius, 

Prince. of the Latian name. 

13 

But by the yellow Tiber 
Was tumnlt and affright : 
100 From all the spacious champaign 
To Eome men took their flight. 
A mile around the city, 

The throng stopped up the ways ; 
A fearful sight it was to see 
105 Through two long nights and days. 

14 

For aged folks on crutches, 

And women great with child, 
And mothers sobbing over babes 

That clung to them and smiled, 
no And sick men borne in litters 

High on the necks of slaves. 
And troops of sunburnt husbandmen 

With reaping-hooks and staves, 

15 

And droves of mules and asses 
115 Laden with skins of wine, 
And endless flocks of goats and sheep. 

And endless herds of kine, 
And endless trains of wagons 
That creaked beneath the weight 



HORATIUS. 43 

120 Of corn-sacks and of liousehold goods, 
Choked every roaring gate. 

16 
Now, from tke rock Tarpeian, 
Conld tlie wan bnrghers spy 
The line of blazing villages 
125 Red in the midnight sky. 
The Fathers of the City, 

They sat all night and day, 
For every hour some horseman came 
With tidings of dismay. 

17 

130 To eastward and to westward 

Have spread the Tuscan bands ; 
Nor house nor fence nor dovecote 

In Crustumerium stands. 
Yerbenna down to Ostia 
135 Hath wasted all the plain ; 
Astur hath stormed Janiculum, 
And the stout guards are slain. 

18 
Iwis, in all the Senate, 

There was no heart so bold, 

122. The Tarpeian rock was a cliff on the steepest side of 
the Capitoline Hill in Rome, and overhung the Tiber. 

123. Burghers. Macaulay uses a very modern word to de- 
scribe the men of Rome. 

126. The Fathers of the City, otherwise the Senators of Rome. 
134. Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, was the port of Rome. 
136. The Janiculan Hill was on the right bank of the Tiber. 
138. Iwis. Compare Lowell's lines in Credidimus Jovem regnare : 

" God vanished long ago, iwis, 
A mere subjective synthesis." 

Its meaning is " certainly." 



44 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

140 But sore it ached, and fast it beat, 
When that ill news was told. 
Forthwith up rose the Consul, 

Up rose the Fathers all ; 
In haste they girded up their gowns, 
145 And hied them to the wall. 

19 

They held a council standing 

Before the Eiver-Gate ; 
Short time was there, ye well may guess, 

For musing or debate. 
150 Out spake the Consul roundly : 

" The bridge must straight go down ; 
For, since Janiculum is lost. 

Naught else can save the town." 

20 
Just then a scout came flying, 
155 All wild with haste and fear ; 
" To arms ! to arms ! Sir Consul : 

Lars Porsena is here." 
On the low hills to westward 
The Consul fixed his eye, 
160 And saw the swarthy storm of dust 
Eise fast along the sky. 

21 

And nearer fast and nearer 

Doth the red whirlwind come ; 
And louder still and still more loud, 
165 From underneath that rolling cloud, 

151. The Iridge was the Sublician bridge, said to have been 
thrown across the Tiber by Ancus Martins in the year 114 of 
the city. 



HORATIUS. 45 

Is heard tlie trumpet's war-note proud, 

The trampling, and the hum. 
And plainly and more plainly 

Now through the gloom appears, 
170 Far to left and far to right, 

In broken gleams of dark-blue light, 
The long array of helmets bright. 

The long array of spears. 

22 

And plainly, and more plainly 
175 Above that glimmering line, 
Now might ye see the banners 
Of twelve fair cities shine ; 
But the banner of proud Clusium 
Was highest of them all, 
180 The terror of the Umbrian, 
The terror of the Gaul. 

23 

And plainly and more plainly 

Now might the burghers know. 
By port and vest, by horse and crest, 
185 Each warlike Lucumo. 
There Cilnius of Arretium 

On his fleet roan was seen ; 
And Astur of the fourfold shield. 
Girt with the brand none else may wield, 
190 Tolumnius with the belt of gold, 

177. The Etruscan confederacy was composed of twelve cities. 

184. By port and vest, i- e., by the way he carried himself and 
by his dress. Vest, an abbreviation of vesture. 

185. Lucumo was the name given by the Latin writers to the 
Etruscan chiefs. 



46 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

And dark Verbenna from tlie hold 
By reedy Thrasymene. 

24 

Fast by tbe royal standard, 
O'erlooking all the war, 
195 Lars Porsena of Clusium 
Sat in bis ivory car. 
By tbe right wheel rode Mamilius, 

Prince of the Latian name ; 
And by the left false Sextus, 
200 That wrought the deed of shame. 

25 
But when the face of Sextus 
Was seen among the foes, 
A yell that rent the firmament 
From all the tow^n arose. 
205 On the house-tops was no woman 
But spat towards him and hissed. 
No child but screamed out curses. 
And shook its little fist. 

26 
But the Consul's brow was sad, 
210 And the Consul's speech was low, 
And darkly looked he at the wall. 
And darkly at the foe. 

192. Thrasymene or Trasimenus is Lago di Perugia, and was 
famous in Roman history as the scene of a victory by Hannibal, 
the Carthaginian general, over the Roman forces. 

197. Octavius Mamilius of Tusculum married the daughter of 
Tarquinius. 

199. Sextus, a son of Tarquinius, and the one whose wicked- 
ness was the immediate cause of the expulsion of the Tarquins. 



HORATIUS. 47 

" Their van will be upon us 
Before the bridge goes down ; 
215 And if they once may win the bridge, 
What hope to save the town ? " 

27 
Then out spake brave Horatius, 

The Captain of the Gate : 
" To every man upon this earth 
220 Death cometh soon or late. 
And how can man die better 
Than facing fearful odds, 
For the ashes of his fathers, 
And the temples of his Gods, 

28 
225 " And for the tender mother 
Who dandled him to rest, 
And for the wife who nurses 

His baby at her breast, 
And for the holy maidens 
230 Who feed the eternal flame, 
To save them from false Sextus 
That wrought the deed of shame ? 

29 
" Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul, 
With all the speed ye may ; 
235 1, with two more to help me. 
Will hold the foe in play. 

229. The Vestal Virgins were bound by vows of celibacy, and 
kept burning the sacred fire of Vesta. The order survived till 
near the close of the fourth century of our era. For a very in- 
teresting account of the House of the Vestal Virgins, see Ancient 
Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, R. Lauciani. 



48 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

In yon strait path a thousand 

May well be stopped by three. 
Now who will stand on either hand, 
240 And keep the bridge with me ? " 

30 
Then out spake Spurius Lartius ; 

A Ramnian proud was he: 
" Lo, I will stand at thy right hand, 
And keep the bridge with thee." 
245 And out spake strong Herminius ; 
Of Titian blood was he : 
" I will abide on thy left side. 
And keep the bridge with thee." 

31 

" Horatius," quoth the Consul, 
250 " As thou sayest, so let it be." 
And straight against that great array 

Forth went the dauntless Three. 
For Romans in Rome's quarrel 
Spared neither land nor gold, 
255 Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life. 
In the brave days of old. 

32 
Then none was for a party ; 

Then all were for the state ; 
Then the great man helj)ed the poor, 
260 And the poor man loved the great : 
Then lands were fairly portioned ; 
Then spoils were fairly sold : 

242. The Ramnes were one of the three tribes who comprised 
the Roman Patricians, or noble class. 
246. The Tities were another of these three tribes. 



HORATIUS. 49 

The Eomans were like brothers 
In the brave days of old. 

33 

265 Now Eoman is to Roman 
More hateful than a foe, 
And the Tribunes beard the high, 
And the Fathers grind the low. 
As we wax hot in faction, 
270 In battle we wax cold : 

Wherefore men fight not as they fought 
In the brave days of old. 

34 

Now while the Three were tightening 
Their harness on their backs, 
275 The Consul was the foremost man 
To take in hand an axe : 
And Fathers mixed with Commons 

Seized hatchet, bar, and crow. 
And smote upon the planks above, 
280 And loosed the props below. 

35 
Meanwhile the Tuscan army, 
Right glorious to behold, 

267. The Tribunes were officers who represented the tribes of 
the common people or Plebs of Rome. In the time when the 
ballad is supposed to be written, there were two strong parties, 
the Fathers or Patricians (Patres), the Common People or Plebs. 

277. Commons. Macaulay, an English Whig, used a political 
word very dear to him, as representing the rise of English par- 
liamentary government. 

280. The props held up the bridge from below. The Latin 
word for props was sublicce ; hence the Sublician bridge. 



60 THOMAS BABINGTON MAC AULA Y. 

Came flashing back tlie noonday light, 
Rank behind rank, like surges bright 
285 Of a broad sea of gold. 

Four hundred trumpets sounded 

A peal of warlike glee. 
As that great host, with measured tread, 
And spears advanced, and ensigns spread, 
290 Kolled slowly towards the bridge's head, 
Where stood the dauntless Three. 

36 
The Three stood calm and silent. 

And looked upon the foes, 
And a great shout of laughter 
295 From all the vanguard rose ; 

And forth three chiefs came spurring 

Before that deep array ; 
To earth they sprang, their swords they drew, 
And lifted high their shields, and flew 
300 To win the narrow way ; 

37 
Aunus from green Tif ernum. 
Lord of the Hill of Vines ; 
And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves 
Sicken in Ilva's mines; 
305 And Picus, long to Clusium 
Vassal in peace and war. 
Who led to fight his Umbrian powers 
From that gray crag where, girt with towers, 

301. Tif ernum was on the west side of the Apennines, near 
the source of the Tiber. It is now Citta di Castello. 

304. Ilva is the modern Elba, renowed as the island to which 
Napoleon was banished. 



HORATIUS. 51 

The fortress of Nequinum lowers 
310 O'er tlie pales waves of Nar. 

38 
Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus 

Into the stream beneath : 
Herminius struck at Seius, 
And clove him to the teeth : 
315 At Picus brave Horatius 
Darted one fiery thrust ; 
And the proud Umbrian's gilded arms 
Clashed in the bloody dust. 

39 
Then Ocnus of Falerii 
320 Rushed on the Roman Three ; 
And Lausulus of Urgo, 
The rover of the sea ; 
And Aruns of Volsinium, 

Who slew the great wild boar, 
825 The great wild boar that had his den 
Amidst the reeds of Cosa's fen, 
And wasted fields, and slaughtered men, 
Along Albinia's shore. 

40 
Herminius smote down Aruns : 
330 Lartius laid Ocnus low : 
Rio:ht to the heart of Lausulus 

Horatius sent a blow. 
" Lie there," he cried, " fell pirate ! 
No more, aghast and pale, 

309. Nequinum, afterward Narnia and now Narni, on the 
banks of the Nar. 

322. The Etruscans were pirates as well as merchants. 



52 THOMAS BABINGTON MAC AULA Y. 

335 From Ostia's walls the crowd shall mark 
The track of thy destroying bark. 
No more Campania's hinds shall fly 
To woods and caverns when they spy 
Thy thrice accursed sail." 

41 

340 But now no sound of laughter 
Was heard among the foes. 
A wild and wrathful clamor 

From all the vanguard rose. 
Six spears' lengths from the entrance 
345 Halted that deep array, 

And for a space no man came forth 
To win the narrow way. 

42 
But hark ! the cry is Astur : 
And lo ! the ranks divide ; 
350 And the great Lord of Luna 
Comes with his stately stride. 
Upon his ample shoulders 

Clangs loud the fourfold shield, 
And in his hand he shakes the brand 
355 Which none but he can wield. 

43 

He smiled on those bold Romans 

A smile serene and high ; 
He eyed the flinching Tuscans, 

And scorn was in his eye. 
360 Quoth he, " The she-woK's litter 

Stand savagely at bay : 

360. The she-wolf ^s litter. The reference is to the story of the 
suckling of Romulus and Remus by a she-wolf. 



HORATIUS. 53 

But will ye dare to follow, 
If Astur clears tlie way ? " 

44 

Then, wliirling up Ms broadsword 
365 With both hands to the height, 
He rushed against Horatius, 

And smote with all his might. 
With shield and blade Horatius 

Right deftly turned the blow. 
370 The blow, though turned, came yet too nigh ; 
It missed his helm, but gashed his thigh : 
The Tuscans raised a joyful cry 

To see the red blood flow. 

45 

He reeled, and on Herminius 
375 He leaned one breathing-space ; 
Then, like a wild-cat mad with wounds, 

Sprang right at Astur's face. 
Through teeth, and skull, and helmet, , 
So fierce a thrust he sped, 
380 The good sword stood a handbreadth out 
Behind the Tuscan's head. 

46 

And the great Lord of Luna 

Fell at that deadly stroke. 
As falls on Mount Alvernus 
385 A thunder-smitten oak. 
Far o'er the crashing forest 

The giant arms lie spread ; 
And the pale augurs, muttering low. 

Gaze on the blasted head. 



54 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

390 On Astur's throat Horatius 

Right firmly pressed his heel, 
And thrice and four times tugged amain, 

Ere he wrenched out the steel. 
" And see," he cried, " the welcome, 
395 Fair guests, that wait you here ! 
What noble Lucumo comes next 
To taste our Eoman cheer ? " 

48 
But at his haughty challenge 
A sullen murmur ran, 
400 Mingled of wrath and shame and dread, 
Along that glittering van. 
There lacked not men of prowess, 

Nor men of lordly race ; 
For all Etruria's noblest 
405 Were round the fatal place. 

49 
But all Etruria's noblest 

Felt their hearts sink to see 
On the earth the bloody corpses. 
In the path the daimtless Three : 
410 And, from the ghastly entrance 

Where those bold Romans stood. 
All shrank, like boys who unaware. 
Ranging the woods to start a hare. 
Come to the mouth of the dark lair 
415 Where, growling low, a fierce old bear 
Lies amidst bones and blood. 



HORATIUS. 55 

50 
Was none who would be foremost 

To lead such dire attack : 
But those behind cried "Forward ! " 
420 And those before cried " Back ! " 
And backward now and forward 

Wavers the deep array; 
And on the tossing sea of steel, 
To and fro the standards reel ; 
425 And the victorious trumpet-peal 
Dies fitfully away. 

51 

Yet one man for one moment 

Stood out before the crowd ; 
Well known was he to all the Three, 
430 And they gave him greeting loud, 
" Now welcome, welcome, Sextus ! 

Now welcome to thy home ! 
Why dost thou stay, and turn away ? 

Here lies the road to Eome." 

52 
435 Thrice looked he at the city ; 
Thrice looked he at the dead ; 
And thrice came on in fury. 

And thrice turned back in dread ; 
And, white with fear and hatred, 
440 Scowled at the narrow way 

Where, wallowing in a pool of blood, 
The bravest Tuscans lay. 



66 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

53 

But meanwhile axe and lever 
Have manfully been plied ; 
445 And now the bridge hangs tottering 
Above the boiling tide. 
" Come back, come back, Horatius ! " 

Loud cried the Fathers all. 
" Back, Lartius ! back, Herminius ! 
450 Back, ere the ruin fall ! " 

54 
Back darted Spurius Lartius ; 

Herminius darted back : 
And, as they passed, beneath their feet 
They felt the timbers crack. 
455 But when they turned their faces, 
And on the farther shore 
Saw brave Horatius stand alone, 
They would have crossed once more. 

55 
But with a crash like thunder 
460 Fell every loosened beam, 

And, like a dam, the mighty wreck 

Lay right athwart the stream ; 
And a long shout of triumph 
Rose from the walls of Rome, 
465 As to the highest turret-tops 

Was splashed the yellow foam. 

And, like a horse unbroken 
When first he feels the rein. 



HORATIUS. 67 

The furious river struggled hard, 
470 And tossed his tawny mane, 

And burst the curb, and bounded, 
Eejoicing to be free. 

And whirling down, in fierce career, 

Battlement, and plank, and pier, 
475 Eushed headlong to the sea. 

57 

Alone stood brave Horatius, 

But constant still in mind ; 
Thrice thirty thousand foes before. 

And the broad flood behind. 
480 " Down with him ! " cried false Sextus, 

With a smile on his pale face. 
" Now yield thee," cried Lars Porsena, 

" Now yield thee to our grace." 

58 
Eound turned he, as not deigning 
485 Those craven ranks to see ; 
Naught spake he to Lars Porsena, 

To Sextus naught spake he ; 
But he saw on Palatinus 

The white porch of his home ; 
490 And he spake to the noble river 

That rolls by the towers of Eome. 

59 

" O Tiber ! father Tiber ! 

To whom the Eomans pray, 
A Eoman's life, a Eoman's arms, 
488. Mons Palatinus survives in the Palatine Hill of modern 
Rome. 



58 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

495 Take thou in charge this day ! " 
So he spake, and speaking sheathed 

The good sword by his side, 
And with his harness on his back 

Plunged headlong in the tide. 

60 
500 No sound of joy or sorrow 

Was heard from either bank ; 
But friends and foes in dumb surprise, 
With parted lips and straining eyes, 
Stood gazing where he sank ; 
505 And when above the surges 
They saw his crest appear. 
All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, 
And even the ranks of Tuscany 
Could scarce forbear to cheer. 

61 

510 But fiercely ran the current, 

Swollen high by months of rain : 
And fast his blood was flowing, 

And he was sore in pain. 
And heavy with his armor, 
515 And spent with changing blows : 
And oft they thought him sinking, 
But still again he rose. 

62 
Never, I ween, did swimmer. 
In such an evil case, 
520 Struggle through such a raging flood 
Safe to the landing-place : 
But his limbs were borne up bravely 



HORATIUS. 59 

By the brave heart within, 
And our good father Tiber 
525 Bore bravely up his chin. 

63 

" Curse on him ! " quoth false Sextus ; 

" Will not the villain drown ? 
But for this stay, ere close of day 

We should have sacked the town ! " 
530 " Heaven help him ! " quoth Lars Porsena, 

" And bring him safe to shore ; 
For such a gallant feat of arms 

Was never seen before." 

64 

And now he feels the bottom ; 
535 Now on dry earth he stands ; 
Now round him throng the Fathers 

To press his gory hands ; 
And now, with shouts and clapping, 
And noise of weeping loud, 
540 He enters through the River-Gate, 
Borne by the joyous crowd. 

65 
They gave him of the corn-land, 
That was of public right, 

525. Macaulay notes as passages in English literature which 

he had in mind when he wrote this : — 

" Our ladye bare upp her chinne." 

Ballad of Childe Waten. 

" Never heavier man and horse 
Stemmed a midnight torrent's force ; 

Yet, through good heart and our Lady's grace, 
At length he gained the landing-place." 

Lay of the La£t Minstrel. 



60 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

As mucli as two strong oxen 
545 Could plough from morn till night ; 
And they made a molten image, 

And set it up on high, 
And there it stands unto this day 

To witness if I lie. 

550 It stands in the Comitium, 
Plain for all folk to see ; 
Horatius in his harness, 

Halting upon one knee : 
And underneath is written, 
555 In letters all of gold. 

How valiantly he kept the bridge 
In the brave days of old. 

67 
And still his name sounds stirring 
Unto the men of Eome, 
560 As the trumpet-blast that cries to them 
To charge the Yolscian home ; 
And wives still pray to Juno 

For boys with hearts as bold 
As his who kept the bridge so well 
565 In the brave days of old, 

68 
And in the nights of winter. 

When the cold north-winds blow. 
And the long howling of the wolves 

Is heard amidst the snow ; 

550. The Comitium was that part of the Forum which served 
as the meeting-place of the Eoman patricians. 



HORATIUS. 61 

670 When round the lonely cottage 
Eoars loud the tempest's din, 
And the good logs of Algidus 
Roar louder yet within ; 

69 
When the oldest cask is opened, 
575 And the largest lamp is lit ; 

When the chestnuts glow in the embers, 

And the kid turns on the spit ; 
When young and old in circle 
Around the firebrands close ; 
580 When the girls are weaving baskets. 
And the lads are shaping bows ; 

70 
When the goodman mends his armor, 

And trims his helmet's plume ; 
When the goodwife's shuttle merrily 
585 Goes flashing through the loom, — 
With weeping and with laughter 

Still is the story told, 
How well Horatius kept the bridge 
In the brave days of old. 

573. The Romans brought some of their firewood from the 
hill of Algidus, about a dozen miles to the southeast of the 
town. 



DR. JOHN BEOWN. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

It happens now and then that a man writes some one 
story, or sketch, or poem, which goes straight to the heart 
of people. Though he may produce many other things, he is 
known peculiarly by this one ; and it often happens that he 
is not a professional author, but it may be a lawyer, or a 
schoolmaster, a minister, or a doctor, who has written the 
one notable thing out of some particular experience. Thus, 
at any rate, it was with Dr. John Brown, a Scottish physi- 
cian, who one day told the story of Rab and his Friends, 
and thereupon became as famous among English-speaking 
people as he was loved and honored in his own town of 
Edinburgh. 

He was born September 22, 1810, and has himself told, 
in one of the tenderest tributes of a son to his father, 
something of his own childhood in the Scottish manse at 
Biggar, and more of that father, who was minister of the 
parish. Brought up in religious ways, he retained through 
life a simple faith, blended with an exquisite charity for 
men and women, children and animals, which was seen in 
his helpful work as a physician and surgeon, in his friend- 
ships, — for many both great and obscure people called 
him friend, — and in his regard for dogs and other animals. 
"Once, when driving," writes a friend, "he suddenly 
stopped in the middle of a sentence, and looked out eagerly 
at the back of the carriage. ' Is it some one you know ? ' 
I asked. * No,' he said, ' it 's a dog I don't know.' ... He 




\ 



<x^W^^5i^^ 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 63 

often used to say that he knew every one in Edinburgh 
except a few new-comers, and to walk Princes Street with 
him was to realize that this was nearly a literal fact." 

Besides Rab and his Friends, Dr. Brown wrote a number 
of sketches of dogs he had known ; he wrote also a delight- 
ful account of Pet Marjorie, a bright little girl, who was 
a friend of Walter Scott, and a number of paj^ers, half 
medical, half literary. These writings preserve a memory 
of his kindly genius ; but after all, really to know the man 
one would need to have heard his friends and neighbors 
speak of him : it was not so much through his books as 
through his personal j)resence that he fixed himself in the 
minds of j^eople. One of his friends thus writes of him : 
" Perhaps the time and place his friends will most naturally 
recall in thinking of him is a winter afternoon, the gas 
lighted, the fire burning clearly, and he seated in liis own 
chair in the drawing-room (that room that was so true 
a reflection of his character), the evening paper in his hand, 
but not so deeply interested in it as not to be quite willing 
to lay it down. If he were reading, and you were unan- 
nounced, you had almost reached his chair before the ad- 
justment of his spectacles allowed him to recognize who 
had come ; and the bright look, followed by ' It 's you, is 
it ? ' was something to remember. The summary of the 
daily news of the town was brought to him at this hour, 
and the varied characters of those who brought it out put 
him in possession of all shades of opinion, and enabled 
him to look at things from every point of view. If there 
had been a racy lecture, or one with some absurdities in it, 
or a good concert, a rush would be made to Rutland Street 
to tell Dr. Brown, and no touch of enthusiasm or humor in 
the narration was thrown away upon him." 

In the latter part of his life he sufEered from seasons of 
melancholy, which shadowed his beautiful spirit. He died 
May 11, 1882. 



RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 

FouE-AND-THiRTY years ago, Bob Ainslie and I 
were coming up Infirmary Street from the Edinburgh 
High School, our heads together, and our arms in- 
tertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how or 
why. 

When we got to the top of the street, and turned 
north, we espied a crowd at the Tron Church. " A 
dog-fight ! " shouted Bob, and was off ; and so was I, 
both of us all but praying that it might not be over 
before we got up ! And is not this boy-nature ? and 
human nature, too ? and don't we all wish a house on 
fire not to be out before we see it ? Dogs like fight- 
ing ; old Isaac says they " delight " in it, and for the 
best of all reasons ; and boys are not cruel because 
they like to see the fight. They see three of the great 
cardinal virtues of "dog or man — courage, endurance, 
and skill — in intense action. This is very different 
from a love of making dogs fight, and enjoying, and 
aggravating, and making gain by their pluck. A boy, 
— be he ever so fond himself of fighting, — if he be 
a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he would 
have run off with Bob and me fast enough : it is a 
natural and a not wicked interest that all boys and 
men have in witnessing intense energy in action. 

Does any curious and finely ignorant woman wish 
to know how Bob's eye at a glance announced a dog- 
fight to his brain ? He did not, he could not, see the 
dogs fighting ; it was a flash of an inference, a rapid 



RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 65 

induction. The crowd round a couple of dogs fight- 
ing is a crowd masculine mainly, with an occasional 
active, compassionate woman fluttering wildly round 
the outside, and using her tongue and her hands freely 
upon the men as so many " brutes ; " it is a crowd 
annular, compact, and mobile ; a crowd centripetal, 
having its eyes and its heads all bent downwards and 
inwards, to one common focus. 

Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over : 
a small, thoroughbred, white bull terrier is busy 
throttling a large shepherd dog, unaccustomed to 
war, but not to be trifled with. They are hard at 
it ; the scientific little fellow doing his work in great 
style, his pastoral enemy fighting wildly, but with 
the sharpest of teeth and a great courage. Science 
and breeding, however, soon had their own ; the 
Game Chicken, as the premature Bob called him, 
working his way up, took his final grip of poor Yar- 
row's throat, — and he lay gasping and done for. 
His master, a brown, handsome, big young shepherd 
from Tweedsmuir, would have liked to have knocked 
down any man, would " drink up Esil, or eat a croco- 
dile," for that part, if he had a chance : it was no 
use kicking the little dog ; that would only make him 
hold the closer. Many were the means shouted out 
in mouthfuls, of the best possible ways of ending it. 
" Water ! " but there was none near, and many cried 
for it who might have got it from the well at Black- 
friars Wynd.i " Bite the tail I " and a large, vague, 
benevolent, middle-aged man, more desirous than 
wise, with some struggle got the bushy end of Yar- 
row's tail into his ample mouth, and bit it with all 
his might. This was more than enough for the much- 
^ A io.7^nd in Edinburgh is a narrow higtiway. 



Q6 DR. JOHN BROWN. 

enduring, much-perspiring shepherd, who, with a 
gleam of joy over his broad visage, delivered a ter- 
rific facer upon our large, vague, benevolent, middle- 
aged friend, ■ — who went down like a shot. 

Still the Chicken holds ; death not far off. " Snuff ! 
a pinch of snuff ! " observed a calm, highly dressed 
young buck, with an eyeglass in his eye. " Snuff, 
indeed ! " growled the angry crowd, affronted and 
glaring. " Snuff ! a pinch of snuff I " again observed 
the buck, but with more urgency ; whereon were pro- 
duced several open boxes, and from a mull which 
may have been at CuUoden, he took a pinch, knelt 
down, and presented it to the nose of the Chicken. 
The laws of physiology and of snuff take their course ; 
the Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free ! 

The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow 
in his arms, — comforting him. 

But the bull terrier's blood is up, and his soul un- 
satisfied ; he grips the first dog he meets, and discov- 
ering she is not a dog, in Homeric phrase, he makes 
a brief sort of amende, and is off. The boys, with 
Bob and me at their head, are after him : down Nid- 
dry Street he goes, bent on mischief ; up the Cow- 
gate like an arrow, — Bob and I, and our small men, 
panting behind. 

There, under the single arch of the South Bridge, 
is a huge mastiff, sauntering down the middle of the 
causeway, as if with his hands in his pockets : he is 
old, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland bull, 
and has the Shakespearian dewlaps shaking as he 
goes. 

The Chicken makes straight at him, and fastens 
on his throat. To our astonishment, the great crea- 
ture does nothing but stand still, hold himself up, and 



RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 67 

roar, — yes, roar ; a long, serious, remonstrative roar. 
How is this? Bob and I are up to them. He is 
muzzled/ The bailies had proclaimed a general 
muzzling, and his master, studying strength and 
economy mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in 
a home-made apparatus, constructed out of the leather 
of some ancient hi^eechin. His mouth was open as 
far as it could ; his lip curled up in rage, — a sort 
of terrible grin ; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out 
the darkness ; the strap across his mouth tense as a 
bowstring; his whole frame stiff with indignation 
and surprise ; his roar asking us all round, " Did 
you ever see the like of this ? " He looked a statue 
of anger and astonishment, done in Aberdeen granite. 

We soon had a crowd : the Chicken held on. " A 
knife ! " cried Bob ; and a cobbler gave him his 
knife : you know the kind of knife, worn away 
obliquely to a point, and always keen. I put its edge 
to the tense leather ; it ran before it ; and then ! 
— one sudden jerk of that enormous head, a sort of 
dirty mist about his mouth, no noise, — and the bright 
and fierce little fellow is dropped, limp and dead. A 
solemn pause : this was more than any of us had bar- 
gained for. I turned the little fellow over, and saw 
he was quite dead ; the mastiff had taken him by the 
small of the back like a rat, and broken it. 

He looked down at his victim appeased, ashamed, 
and amazed ; snuffed him all over, stared at him, and 
taking a sudden thought, turned round and trotted 
off. Bob took the dead dog up, and said, " John, we '11 
bury him after tea." " Yes," said I, and was off after 
the mastiff. He made up the Cowgate at a rapid swing ; 
he had forgotten some engagement. He turned up the 
Candlemaker Kow, and stoj^ped at the Harrow Inn. 



68 DR. JOHN BROWN. 

There was a carrier's cart ready to start, and a 
keen, thin, impatient, black-a-vised little man, his 
hand at his gray horse's head, looking about angrily 
for something. " Rab, ye thief ! " said he, aiming a 
kick at my great friend, who drew cringing up, and 
avoiding the heavy shoe with more agility than dig- 
nity, and watching his master's eye, slunk dismayed 
under the cart, — his ears down, and as much as he 
had of tail down too. 

What a man this must be — thought I — to whom 
my tremendous hero turns tail ! The carrier saw the 
muzzle hanging, cut and useless, from his neck, and 
I eagerly told him the story, which Bob and I always 
thought, and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir 
Walter alone were worthy to rehearse. The severe 
little man was mitigated, and condescended to say, 
" Rab, my man, puir Rabbie," — whereupon the stump 
of a tail rose up, the ears were cocked, the eyes filled, 
and were comforted ; the two friends were reconciled. 
" Hupp ! " and a stroke of the whip were given to 
Jess, and off went the three. 

Bob and I buried the Game Chicken that night (we 
had not much of a tea) in the back-green of his house 
in Melville Street, No. 17, with considerable gravity 
and silence ; and being at the time in the Iliad, and, 
like all boys, Trojans, we called him Hector, of course. 



Six years have passed, — a long time for a boy and 
a dog : Bob Ainslie is off to the wars ; I am a medical 
student, and clerk at Minto House Hospital. 

Rab I saw almost every week, on the Wednesday, 
and we had much pleasant intimacy. I found the 



RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 69 

way to his heart by frequent scratching of his huge 
head, and an occasional bone. When I did not notice 
him he would plant himself straight before me, and 
stand wagging that bud of a tail, and looking up, with 
his head a little to the one side. His master I occa- 
sionally saw ; he used to call me " Maister John," but 
was laconic as any Spartan. 

One fine October afternoon, I was leaving the hos- 
pital, when I saw the large gate open, and in walked 
Rab, with that great and easy saunter of his. He 
looked as if taking general possession of the place; 
like the Duke of Wellington entering a subdued city, 
satiated with victory and peace. After him came 
Jess, now white from age, with her cart ; and in it a 
woman, carefully wrapped up, — the carrier leading 
the horse anxiously, and looking back. When he saw 
me, James (for his name was James Noble) made a 
curt and grotesque "boo," and said, " Maister John, 
this is the mistress ; she 's got a trouble in her breest 

— some kind o' an income, we 're thinking." 

By this time I saw the woman's face ; she was sit- 
ting on a sack filled with straw, her husband's plaid 
round her, and his big-coat, with its large white metal 
buttons, over her feet. 

I never saw a more unforgetable face, — pale, se- 
rious, lonely^ delicate, sweet, without being at all 
what we call fine. She looked sixty, and had on a 
mutch, white as snow, with its black ribbon ; her 
silvery, smooth hair setting off her dark -gray eyes, 

— eyes such as one sees only twice or thrice in a life- 
time, full of suffering, full also of the overcoming of 
it : her eyebrows black and delicate, and her mouth 

1 It is not easy giving this look by one word ; it was express- 
ive of her being so much of her life alone. — J. B. 



70 DR. JOHN BROWN. 

firm, patient, and contented, wliicli few mouths ever 
are. 

As I have said, I never saw a more beautiful 
countenance, or one more subdued to settled quiet. 
"Ailie," said James, "this is Maister John, the young 
doctor ; Rab's f reend, ye ken. We often speak aboot 
you, doctor." She smiled, and made a movement, 
but said nothing, and prepared to come down, put- 
ting her plaid aside and rising. Had Solomon, in all 
his glory, been handing down the Queen of Sheba at 
his palace gate, he could not have done it more dain- 
tily, more tenderly, more like a gentleman, than did 
James the Howgate carrier, when he lifted down 
Ailie his wife. The contrast of his small, swarthy, 
weather-beaten, keen, worldly face to hers — pale, 
subdued, and beautiful — was something wonderful. 
Rab looked on, concerned and puzzled, but ready for 
anything that might turn up, — were it to strangle the 
nurse, the porter, or even me. Ailie and he seemed 
great friends. 

" As I was sayin', she 's got a kind o' trouble in her 
breest, doctor ; wull ye tak' a look at it ? " We 
walked into tjie consulting-room, all four ; Rab grim 
and comic, willing to be happy and confidential if 
cause could be shown, willing also to be the reverse, 
on the same terms. Ailie sat down, undid her open 
gown and her lawn handkerchief round her neck, and 
without a word showed me her right breast. I looked 
at and examined it carefully, — she and James watch- 
ing me, and Rab eying all three. What could I say ? 
there it was, that had once been so soft, so shapely, 
so white, so gracious and bountiful, so "full of all 
blessed conditions," — hard as a stone, a centre of 
horrid pain, making that pale face, with its gray. 



RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 71 

lucid, reasonable eyes, and its sweet, resolved mouth, 
express the full measure of suffering overcome. Why- 
was that gentle, modest, sweet woman, clean and lov- 
able, condemned by God to bear such a burden ? 

I got her away to bed. " May Rab and me bide ? " 
said James. " You may ; and Rab, if he will behave 
himself." " I 'se warrant he 's do that, doctor ; " and 
in slank the faithful beast. I wish you could have 
seen him. There are no such dogs now. He belonged 
to a lost tribe. As I have said, he was brindled and 
gray like Rubislaw granite ; his hair short, hard, and 
close, like a lion's ; his body thick-set, like a little 
bull, — a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He 
must have been ninety pounds' weight at the least ; 
he had a large, blunt head ; his muzzle black as night, 
his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two — 
being all he had — gleaming out of his jaws of dark- 
ness. His head was scarred with the records of old 
wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it ; 
one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Arch- 
bishop Leighton's father's ; the remaining eye had 
the power of two ; and above it, and in constant com- 
munication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear, which 
was forever unfurling itself, like an old flag ; and then 
that bud of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in 
any sense be said to be long, being as broad as long, 
— the mobility, the instantaneousness of that bud 
were very funny and surprising, and its expressive 
twinklings and winkings, the intercommunications be- 
tween the eye, the ear, and it, were of the oddest and 
swiftest. 

Rab had the dignity and simplicity of great size ; 
and having fought his way all along the road to abso- 
lute supremacy, he was as mighty in his own line as 



72 DR. JOHN BROWN. 

Julius Csesar or the Duke of Wellington, and had the 
gravity ^ of all great fighters. 

You must have often observed the likeness of cer- 
tain men to certain animals, and of certain dogs to 
men. Now, I never looked at Rah without thinking 
of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller.^ The 
same large, heavy, menacing, combative, sombre, hon- 
est countenance, the same deep inevitable eye, the 
same look, — as of thunder asleep, but ready, — nei- 
ther a dog nor a man to be trifled with. 

Next day, my master, the surgeon, examined Ailie. 
There was no doubt it must kill her, and soon. It 
could be removed — it might never return — it would 
give her speedy relief — she should have it done. She 
curtsied, looked at James, and said, " When ? " " To- 
morrow," said the kind surgeon, — a man of few 
words. She and James and Rab and I retired. I 
noticed that he and she spoke little, but seemed to an- 
ticipate everything in each other. The following day, 

^ A Highland game-keeper, when asked why a certain terrier, 
of singular pluck, was so much more solemn than the other dogs, 
said, " Oh, sir, life 's full o' sairiousness to him, — he just never 
can get enuff o' fechtin'." — J. B. 

^ Fuller was in early life, when a farmer lad at Soham, fa- 
mous as a boxer ; not quarrelsome, but not without " the stern 
delight " a man of strength and courage feels in their exercise. 
Dr. Charles Stewart, of Dunearn, whose rare gifts and graces as 
a physician, a divine, a scholar, and a gentleman, live only in 
the memory of those few who knew and survive him, liked to 
tell how Mr. Fuller used to say that, when he was in the pulpit 
and saw a huirdly man come along the passage, he would instinc- 
tively draw himself up, measure his imaginary antagonist, and 
forecast how he would deal with him, his hands meanwhile con- 
densing into fists, and tending to " square." He must have 
been a hard hitter, if he boxed as he preached, — what *' The 
Fancy " would call *' an ugly customer." — J. B. 



RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 73 

at noon, the students came in, hurrying up the great 
stair. At the first landing-place, on a small, well- 
known blackboard, was a bit of paper fastened by 
wafers, and many remains of old wafers beside it. 
On the paper were the words, — " An operation to- 
day. J. B., Clerk:' 

Up ran the youths, eager to secure good places ; in 
they crowded, full of interest and talk. " What 's 
the case ? " " Which side is it ? " 

Don't think them heartless ; they are neither better 
nor worse than you or I ; they get over their profes- 
sional horrors, and into their proper work; and in 
them pity as an emotion, ending in itself or at best 
in tears and a long-drawn breath, lessens ; while pity 
as a motive is quickened, and gains power and pur- 
pose. It is well for poor human nature that it is so. 

The operating theatre is crowded ; much talk and 
fun, and all the cordiality and stir of youth. The 
surgeon with his staff of assistants is there. In comes 
Ailie : one look at her quiets and abates the eager 
students. That beautiful old woman is too much for 
them ; they sit down, and are dumb, and gaze at her. 
These rough boys feel the power of her presence. She 
walks in quickly, but without haste ; dressed in her 
mutch, her neckerchief, her white dimity short-gown, 
her black bombazine petticoat, showing her white 
worsted stockings and her carpet-shoes. Behind her 
was James with Bab. James sat down in the dis- 
tance, and took that huge and noble head between his 
knees. Bab looked perplexed and dangerous ; forever 
cocking his ear and dro]3ping it as fast. 

Ailie stepped up on a seat, and laid herself on the 
table, as her friend the surgeon told her ; arranged 
herself, gave a rapid look at James, shut her eyes, 



74 DR. JOHN BROWN. 

rested herself on me, and took my hand. The opera- 
tion was at once begun ; it was necessarily slow ; and 
chloroform — one of God's best gifts to his suffering 
children — was then unknown. The surgeon did his 
work. The pale face showed its pain, but was still 
and silent. Rab's soul was working within him ; he 
saw that something strange was going on, — blood 
flowing from his mistress, and she suffering ; his 
ragged ear was up and importunate ; he growled, and 
gave now and then a sharp, impatient yelp ; he would 
have liked to have done something to that man. But 
James had him firm, and gave him a glower from time 
to time, and an intimation of a possible kick : all the 
better for James, it kept his eye and his mind off 
Ailie. 

It is over: she is dressed, steps gently and decently 
down from the table, looks for James ; then, turning 
to the surgeon and the students, she curtsies, and in 
a low, clear voice, begs their pardon if she has be- 
haved ill. The students — all of us — Jfvept like chil- 
dren ; the surgeon happed her up carefully, — and, 
resting on James and me, Ailie went to her room, Rab 
following. We put her to bed. James took off his 
heavy shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capt and toe- 
capt, and put them carefully under the table, saying, 
" Maister John, I 'm for nane o' yer strynge nurse 
bodies for Ailie. I '11 be her nurse, and I '11 gang 
aboot on my stockin' soles as canny as pussy." And 
so he did; and handy and clever, and swift and 
tender as any woman, was that horny-handed, snell, 
peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave 
her : he seldom slept ; and often I saw his small, 
shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed on her. As 
before, they spoke little. 



RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 75 

Rab behaved well, never moving, showing us how 
meek and gentle he could be, and occasionally, in his 
sleep, letting us know that he was demolishing some 
adversary. He took a walk with me every day, gen- 
erally to the Candlemaker Row ; but he was sombre 
and mild ; declined doing battle, though some fit 
cases offered, and indeed submitted to sundry indig- 
nities ; and was always very ready to turn, and came 
faster back, and trotted up the stair with much light- 
ness, and went straight to that door. 

Jess, the mare, had been sent with her weather- 
worn cart to Howgate, and had doubtless her own 
dim and placid meditations and confusions on the 
absence of her master and Rab, and her unnatural 
freedom from the road and her cart. 

For some days Ailie did well. The wound healed 
'' by the first intention ; " for, as James said, " Our 
Ailie's skin's ower clean to beil." The students 
came in, quiet and anxious, and surrounded her bed. 
She said she liked to see their young, honest faces. 
The surgeon dressed her, and spoke to her in his own 
short, kind way, pitying her through his eyes, Rab 
and James outside the circle, — Rab being now recon- 
ciled, and even cordial, and having made up his mind 
that as yet nobody required worrying, but, as you may 
suppose, sempei' ^;ara^^^s. 

So far well ; but four days after the operation my 
patient had a sudden and long shivering, a " groosin'," 
as she called it. I saw her soon after : her eyes were 
too bright, her cheek colored : she was restless, and 
ashamed of being so ; the balance was lost ; mischief 
had begun. On looking at the wound, ablush of red 
told the secret: her pulse was rapid, her breathing 
anxious and quick ; she was n't herself, as she said, 



76 DR. JOHN BROWN. 

and was vexed at her restlessness. We tried what 
we could; James did everything, was everywhere; 
never in the way, never out of it ; Rab subsided under 
the table into a dark place, and was motionless, all 
but his eye, which followed every one. Ailie got 
worse; began to wander in her mind, gently; was 
more demonstrative in her ways to James, rapid in 
her questions, and sharp at times. He was vexed, 
and said, " She was never that way afore; no, never." 
For a time she knew her head was wrong, and was 
always asking our pardon, — the dear, gentle old 
woman ; then delirium set in strong, without pause. 
Her brain gave way, and then came that terrible 
spectacle, — 

" The intellectual power, through words and things, 
Went sounding on its dim and perilous way ; " 

she sang bits of old songs and Psalms, stopping sud- 
denly, mingling the Psalms of David and the diviner 
words of his Son and Lord with homely odds and 
ends and scraps of ballads. 

Nothing more touching, or in a sense more strangely 
beautiful, did I ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, 
affectionate, eager, Scotch voice, — the swift, aimless, 
bewildered mind, the baffled utterance, the bright 
and perilous eye; some wild words, some household 
cares, something for James, the names of the dead, 
Rab called rapidly and in a " fremyt " voice, and 
he starting up surprised, and slinking off as if he 
were to blame somehow, or had been dreaming he 
heard ; many eager questions and beseechings which 
James and I could make nothing of, and on which 
she seemed to set her all, and then sink back unun- 
derstood. It was very sad, but better than many 



RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 77 

things tliat are not called sad. James hovered about, 
put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever ; 
read to her, when there was a lull, short bits from the 
Psalms, prose and metre, chanting the latter in his 
own rude and serious way, showing great knowledge 
of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and doating 
over her as his " ain Ailie." "Ailie, ma woman!" 
" Ma ain bonnie wee dawtie ! " 

The end was drawing on : the golden bowl was 
breaking ; the silver cord was fast being loosed, — 
that animula hlandula^ vagula, hos2Jes^ comesque^ was 
about to flee. The body and the soul — companions 
for sixty years — were being sundered, and taking 
leave. She was walking alone through the valley of 
that shadow into which one day we must all enter, — 
and yet she was not alone, for we know whose rod 
and staff were comforting her. 

One night she had fallen quiet, and, as we hoped, 
asleejD ; her eyes were shut. We put down the gas, 
and sat watching her. Suddenly she sat up in bed, 
and taking a bed-gown which was lying on it rolled 
up, she held it eagerly to her breast, — to the right 
side. We could see her eyes bright with a surpris- 
ing tenderness and joy, bending over this bundle of 
clothes. She held it as a woman holds her sucking 
child ; opening out her nightgown impatiently, and 
holding it close, and brooding over it, and murmur- 
ing foolish little words, as over one whom his mother 
comforteth, and who sucks and is satisfied. It was 
pitiful and strange to see her wasted, dying look, keen 
and yet vague — her immense love. 

1 The first words of a famous Latin verse of the Emperor 
Hadrian, addressed to his soul. Dr. Holmes has translated it : 

" Dear little, flitting, pleasing sprite, 
The body's comrade and its guest." 



78 DR. JOHN BROWN. 

" Preserve me ! " groaned James, giving way, and 
then she rocked back and forward, as if to make it 
sleep, hushing it, and wasting on it her infinite fond- 
ness. " Wae 's me, doctor ! I declare she 's thinkin' 
it 's that bairn." " What bairn ? " " The only bairn 
we ever had ; our wee Mysie, and she 's in the King- 
dom, forty years and mair." It was plainly true : 
the pain in the breast, telling its urgent story to 
a bewildered, ruined brain, was misread and mis- 
taken ; it suggested to her the uneasiness of a breast 
full of milk, and then the child ; and so again once 
more they were together, and she had her ain wee 
Mysie in her bosom. 

This was the close. She sank rapidly: the delir- 
ium left her ; but, as she whispered, she was " clean 
silly ; " it was the lightening before the final darkness. 
After having for some time lain still, her eyes shut, 
she said, " James ! " He came close to her, and, lift- 
ing up her calm, clear, beautiful eyes, she gave him 
a long look, turned to me kindly but shortly, looked 
for Rab but could not see him, then turned to her 
husband again, as if she would never leave off look- 
ing, shut her eyes, and composed herself. She lay 
for some time breathing quick, and passed away so 
gently that, when we thought she was gone, James, 
in his old-fashioned way, held the mirror to her face. 
After a long pause, one small spot of dimness was 
breathed out ; it vanished away, and never returned, 
leaving the blank, clear darkness of the mirror with- 
out a stain. " What is our life ? it is even a vapor, 
which appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth 
away." 

Rab all this time had been full awake and motion- 
less ; he came forward beside us: Ailie's hand, which 



RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 79 

James had held, was hanging do^vn ; it was soaked 
with his tears ; Rab licked it all over carefully, looked 
at her, and returned to his place under the table. 

J^mes and I sat, I don't know how long, but for 
some time, — saying nothing : he started up abruptly, 
and with some noise went to the table, and, putting 
his right fore and middle fingers each into a shoe, 
pulled them out, and put them on, breaking one of 
the leather latchets, and muttering in anger, "I never 
did the like o' that afore ! " 

I believe he never did ; nor after either. " Rab ! " 
he said roughly, and pointing with his thumb to the 
bottom of the bed. Rab leapt up, and settled him- 
self, his head and eye to the dead face. " Maister 
John, ye '11 wait for me," said the carrier, and disap- 
peared in the darkness, thundering downstairs in his 
heavy shoes. I ran to a front window ; there he was, 
already round the house, and out at the gate, fleeing 
like a shadow. 

I was afraid about him, and yet not afraid ; so I 
sat down beside Rab, and, being wearied, fell asleep. 
I awoke from a sudden noise outside. It was No- 
vember, and there had been a heavy fall of snow. 
Rab was iti static quo ; he heard the noise, too, and 
plainly knew it, but never moved. I looked out ; and 
there at the gate, in the dim morning, — for the sun 
was not up, — was Jess and the cart, — a cloud of 
steam rising from the old mare. I did not see James ; 
he was already at the door, and came up the stairs 
and met me. It was less than three hours since he 
left, and he must have posted out — who knows how ? 
— to Howgate, full nine miles off, yoked Jess, and 
driven her astonished into town. He had an armful 
of blankets, and was streaming with perspiration. 



80 



DR. JOHN BROWN. 



He nodded to me, spread out on tlie floor two pairs 
of clean old blankets, having at their corners " A. G., 
1794," in large letters in red worsted. These were 
the initials of Alison Graeme, and James may have 
looked in at her from without — himself unseen but 
not unthought of — when he was " wat, wat, and 
weary," and after having walked many a mile over 
the hills, may have seen her sitting, while " a' the lave 
were sleepin'," and by the firelight working her 
name on the blankets for her ain James's bed. 

He motioned Rab down, and, taking his wife in his 
arms, laid her in the blankets, and happed her care- 
fully and firmly up, leaving the face uncovered ; and 
then, lifting her, he nodded again sharply to me, and 
with a resolved but utterly miserable face, strode 
along the passage and downstairs, followed by Rab. 
I followed with a light ; but he did n't need it. I 
went out, holding stupidly the candle in my hand in 
the calm, frosty air; we were soon at the gate. I 
could have helped him, but I saw he was not to be 
meddled with, and he was strong and did not need it. 
He laid her down as tenderly, as safely, as he had 
lifted her out ten days before, — as tenderly as when 
he had her first in his arms when she was only " A. 
G.," — sorted her, leaving that beautiful sealed face 
open to the heavens ; and then, taking Jess by the 
head, he moved away. He did not notice me, neither 
did Rab, who presided behind the cart. 

I stood till they passed through the long shadow of 
the College, and turned up Nicolson Street. I heard 
the solitary cart sound through the streets, and die 
away and come again ; and I returned, thinking of 
that company going up Libberton Brae, then along 
Roslin Muir, the morning light touching the Pent- 



RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 81 

lands and making them like on-looking ghosts, then 
down the hill through Auchindinny woods, past 
" haunted Woodhouselee ; " and as daybreak came 
sweeping up the bleak Lammermuirs, and fell on his 
own door, the company would stop, and James would 
take the key, and lift Ailie up again, laying her on 
her own bed, and, having put Jess up, would return 
with Rab and shut the door. 

James buried his wife, with his neighbors mourning, 
E-ab inspecting the solemnity from a distance. It was 
snow, and that black, ragged hole would look strange 
in the midst of the swelling, spotless cushion of white. 
James looked after everything ; then rather suddenly 
fell ill, and took to bed; was insensible when the 
doctor came, and soon died. A sort of low fever was 
prevailing in the village, and his want of sleep, his 
exhaustion, and his misery made him apt to take it. 
The grave was not difficult to reopen. A fresh fall of 
snow had again made all things white and smooth ; 
Kab once more looked on, and slunk home to the 
stable. 

And what of Rab ? I asked for him next week of 
the new carrier who got the goodwill of James's busi- 
ness, and was now master of Jess and her cart. 
" How 's Rab ? " He put me off, and said rather 
rudely, "What's your business wi' the dowg?" I 
was not to be so put off. " Where 's Rab ? " He, get- 
ting confused and red, and intermeddling with his 
hair, said, "'Deed, sir, Rab 's deid." "Dead! what 
did he die of?" " Weel, sir," said he, getting red- 
der, " he did na exactly dee ; he was killed. I had 
to brain him wi' a rack-pin ; there was nae doin' wi' 
him. He lay in the treviss wi' the mear, and wad na 



82 DR. JOHN BROWN. 

come oot. I tempit him wi' kail and meat, but lie 
wad tak naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the 
beast, and he was aye gur gurrin', and grup gruppin' 
me by the legs. I was laith to make awa wi' the auld 
(Jowg, — his like was na atween this and Thornhill, — 
but, 'deed, sir, I could do naething else." I believed 
him. Fit end for Eab, quick and complete. His 
teeth and his friends gone, why should he keep the 
peace and be civil ? 



OUR DOGS. 

I WAS bitten severely by a little dog when with my 
mother at Moffat Wells, being then three years of 
age, and I have remained " bitten " ever since in the 
matter of dogs. I remember that little dog, and can 
at this moment not only recall my pain and terror — 
I have no doubt I was to blame — but also her face ; 
and were I allowed to search among the shades in the 
cynic Elysian fields, I could pick her out still. All 
my life I have been familiar with these faithful crea- 
tures, making friends of them, and speaking to them ; 
and the only time I ever addressed the public, about a 
year after being bitten, was at the farm of Kirklaw 
Hill, near Biggar, when the text, given out from an 
empty cart in which the ploughmen had placed me, 
was " Jacob's dog," and my entire sermon was as fol- 
lows : " Some say that Jacob had a black dog (the o 
very long), and some say that Jacob had a white dog, 
but I (imagine the presumption of four years !) say 
Jacob had a brown dog, and a brown dog it shall be." 

I had many intimacies from this time onwards, — 
Bawtie, of the inn ; Keeper, the carrier's bull terrier ; 



OUR DOGS. 83 

Tiger, a huge tawny mastiff from Edinburgh, wliich I 
think must have been an uncle of Kab's ; all the sheep 
dogs at Callands, — Spring, Mavis, Yarrow, Swallow, 
Cheviot, etc. ; but it was not till I was at college, and 
my brother at the High School, that we possessed a 



dog. 



TOBY 



Was the most utterly shabby, vulgar, mean-looking 
cur I ever beheld : in one word, a tyke. He had not 
one good feature except liis teeth and eyes, and his 
bark, if that can be called a feature. He was not 
ugly enough to be interesting ; his color black and 
white, his shape leggy and clumsy ; altogether what 
Sydney Smith would have called an extraordinarily 
ordinary dog ; and, as I have said, not even greatly 
ugly, or, as the Aberdonians have it, bonnie loi^ ill- 
faiiredness. My brother William found him the 
centre of attraction to a multitude of small black- 
guards who were drowning him slowly in Lochend 
Loch, doing their best to lengthen out the process, and 
secure the greatest amount of fun with the nearest ap- 
proach to death. Even then Toby showed his great 
intellect by pretending to be dead, and thus gaining 
time and an inspiration. William bought him for two- 
pence, and, as he had it not, the boys accompanied 
him to Pilrig Street, when I happened to meet him, 
and giving the twopence to the biggest boy, had the 
satisfaction of seeing a general engagement of much 
severity, during which the twopence disappeared ; 
one penny going off with a very small and swift boy, 
and the other vanishing hopelessly into the grating of 
a drain. 

Toby was for weeks in the house unbeknown to any 



84 DR. JOHN BROWN. 

one but ourselves two and the cook, and from my 
grandmother's love of tidiness and hatred of dogs and 
of dirt, I believe she would have expelled " him whom 
we saved from drowning," had not he, in his straight- 
forward way, walked into my father's bedroom one 
night when he was bathing his feet, and introduced 
himself with a wag of his tail, intimating a general 
willingness to be happy. My father laughed most 
heartily, and at last Toby, having got his way to his 
bare feet, and having begun to lick his soles and be- 
tween his toes with his small, rough tongue, my father 
gave such an unwonted shout of laughter that we — 
grandmother, sisters, and all of us — went in. Grand- 
mother might argue with all her energy and skill, but 
as surely as the pressure of Tom Jones's infantile fist 
upon Mr. Allworthy's forefinger undid all the argu- 
ments of his sister, so did Toby's tongue and fun 
prove too many for grandmother's eloquence. I some- 
how think Toby must have been up to all this, for I 
think he had a peculiar love for my father ever after, 
and regarded grandmother from that hour with a care- 
ful and cool eye. 

Toby, when full grown, was a strong, coarse dog ; 
coarse in shape, in countenance, in hair, and in man- 
ner. I used to think that, according to the Pythago- 
rean doctrine, he must have been, or been going to be, 
a Gilmerton carter. He was of the bull terrier vari- 
ety, coarsened through much mongrelism and a dubious 
and varied ancestry. His teeth were good, and he 
had a large skull, and a rich bark as of a dog three 
times his size, and a tail which I never saw equaled, — 
indeed, it was a tail per se : it was of immense girth 
and not short, equal throughout like a policeman's 
baton ; the machinery for working it was of great 



OUR DOGS. 85 

power, and acted in a way, as far as I have been able 
to discover, quite original. We called it his ruler. 

When he wished to get into the house, he first 
whined gently, then growled, then gave a sharp bark, 
and then came a resounding, mighty stroke which 
shook the house : this, after much study and watch- 
ing, we found was done by his bringing the entire 
length of his solid tail flat upon the door with a sud- 
den and vigorous stroke; it was quite a tour deforce,'^ 
or a coup de queue? and he was perfect in it at once, 
his first hang authoritative having been as masterly 
and telling as his last. 

With all this inbred vulgar air, he was a dog of 
great moral excellence, — affectionate, faithful, honest 
up to his light, with an odd humor as peculiar and as 
strong as his tail. My father, in his reserved way, 
was very fond of him, and there must have been very 
funny scenes with them, for we heard bursts of laugh- 
ter issuing from his study when they two were by 
themselves ; there was something in him that took 
that grave, beautiful, melancholy face. One can fancy 
him in the midst of his books, and sacred work and 
thoughts, pausing and looking at the secular Toby, 
who was looking out for a smile to begin his rough 
fun, and about to end by coursing and gurrirC round 
the room, upsetting my father's books, laid out on the 
floor for consultation, and himself nearly at times, as 
he stood watching him, and off his guard and shak- 
ing with laughter. Toby had always a great desire 
to accompany my father up to town ; this my father's 
good taste and sense of dignity, besides his fear of 
losing his friend (a vain fear !), forbade, and as the 
decision of character of each was great and nearly 
1 A feat of strength. ^ A stroke of the tail. 



86 DR. JOHN BROWN. 

equal, it was often a drawn game. Toby ultimately, 
by making it his entire object, triumphed. He usually 
was nowhere to be seen on my father leaving ; he, 
however, saw him, and lay in wait at the head of the 
street, and up Leith Walk he kept him in view from 
the opposite side like a detective, and then, when he 
knew it was hopeless to hound him home, he crossed 
unblushingly over, and joined company, excessively 
rejoiced of course. 

One Sunday he had gone with him to church, and 
left him at the vestry door. The second psalm was 
given out, and my father was sitting back in the 
pulpit, when the door at its back, up which he came 
from the vestry, was seen to move and gently open, 
then, after a long pause, a black shining snout pushed 
its way steadily into the congregation, and was fol- 
lowed by Toby's entire body. He looked somewhat 
abashed, but snuffing his friend he advanced as if on 
thin ice, and, not seeing him, put his forelegs on the 
pulpit, and behold there he was, his own familiar 
chum. I watched all this, and anything more beau- 
tiful than his look of happiness, of comfort, of entire 
ease, when he beheld his friend, — the smoothing down 
of the anxious ears, the swing of gladness of that 
mighty tail, — I don't expect soon to see. My father 
quietly opened the door, and Toby was at his feet and 
invisible to all but himself ; had he sent old George 
Peaston, the "minister's man," to put him out, Toby 
would probably have shown his teeth, and astonished 
George. He slunk home as soon as he could, and 
never repeated that exploit. 

I never saw in any other dog the sudden transition 
from discretion, not to say abject cowardice, to blaz- 
ing and permanent valor. From his earliest years he 



OUR DOGS. 87 

showed a general meanness of blood, inherited from 
many generations of starved, bekicked, and down- 
trodden forefathers and mothers, resulting in a con- 
dition of intense abjectness in all matters of personal 
fear ; anybody, even a beggar, by a goivl ^ and a threat 
of eye, could send him oif howling by anticipation, 
with that mighty tail between his legs. But it was 
not always so to be, and I had the privilege of seeing 
courage, reasonable, absolute, and for life, spring up 
in Toby at once, as did Athene from the skull of 
Jove. It happened thus : — 

Toby was in the way of hiding his culinary bones 
in the small gardens before his own and the neighbor- 
ing doors. Mr. Scrymgeour, two doors off, a bulky, 
choleric, red-haired, red-faced man, — torvo vultu,^ — 
was, by the law of contrast, a great cultivator of 
flowers, and he had often scowled Toby into all but 
non-existence by a stamp of his foot and a glare of 
his eye. One day, his gate being open, in walks 
Toby with a huge bone, and, making a hole where 
Scrymgeour had two minutes before been planting 
some precious slip, the name of which on paper and 
on a stick Toby made very light of, substituted his 
bone, and was engaged covering it, or thinking he was 
covering it up, with his shoveling nose (a very odd 
relic of paradise in the dog), when S. spied him 
through the inner glass door, and was out upon him 
like the Assyrian, with a terrible gotvl I watched 
them. Instantly Toby made straight at him witli a 
roar, too, and an eye more torve than Scrymgeour's, 
who, retreating without reserve, fell prostrate, there 
is reason to believe, in his own lobby. Toby con- 

^ Scotch for howl. 

2 Of savage countenance, a phrase from the Latin poet Horace. 



88 • DR. JOHN BROWN. 

tented himself with proclaiming Ms victory at the 
door, and returning, finished his bone-planting at his 
leisure ; the enemy, who had scuttled behind the glass- 
door, glaring at him. 

From this moment Toby was an altered dog. Pluck 
at first sight was lord of all ; from that time dated 
his first tremendous deliverance of tail against the 
door which we called " come listen to my tail." That 
very evening he paid a visit to Leo, next door's dog, 
a big, tyrannical bully and coward, which its mas- 
ter thought a Newfoundland, but whose pedigree we 
knew better ; this brute continued the same system 
of chronic extermination which was interrupted at 
Lochend, having Toby down among his feet, and 
threatening him with instant death two or three times 
a day. To him Toby paid a visit that very evening, 
down into his den, and walked about, as much as to 
say, " Come on, Macduff ! " but Macduff did not come 
on, and henceforward there was an armed neutrality, 
and they merely stiffened up and made their backs 
rigid, pretended each not to see the other, walking 
solemnly round, as is the manner of dogs. Toby 
worked his new-found faculty thoroughly, but with 
discretion. He killed cats, astonished beggars, kept 
his own in his own garden against all comers, and 
came off victorious in several well-fought battles ; but 
he was not quarrelsome or foolhardy. It was very 
odd how his carriage changed, holding his head up, 
and how much pleasanter he was at home. To my 
father, next to William, who was his Humane Society 
man, he remained stanch. And what of his end ? for 
the misery of dogs is that they die so soon, or as Sir 
Walter says, it is well they do ; for, if they lived as 
long as a Christian, and we liked them in proportion, 



OUR DOGS. 89 

and they then died, he said that was a thing he could 
not stand. 

His exit was miserable, and had a strange poetic or 
tragic relation to his entrance. My father was out of 
town ; I was away in England. Whether it was that 
the absence of my father had relaxed his power of 
moral restraint, or whether through neglect of the 
servant he had been desperately hungry, or most 
likely both being true, Toby was discovered with the 
remains of a cold leg of mutton, on which he had 
made an ample meal ; ^ this he was in vain endeavor- 
ing to plant as of old, in the hope of its remaining 
undiscovered till to-morrow's hunger returned, the 
whole shank bone sticking up unmistakably. This 
was seen by our excellent and Rhadamanthine grand- 
mother, who pronounced sentence on the instant ; 
and next day, as William was leaving for the High 
School, did he in the sour morning, through an east- 
erly haur^ behold him " whom he saved from drown- 
ing," and whom, with better results than in the case 
of Launce and Crab,^ he had taught, as if one should 
say, " Thus would I teach a dog," dangling by his 
own chain from his own lamp-post, one of his hind 
feet just touching the pavement, and his body pre- 
ternaturally elongated. 

William found him dead and warm, and, falling in 
with the milk-boy at the head of the street, questioned 
him, and discovered that he was the executioner, and 

1 Toby was in the state of the shepherd boy whom George 
Webster met in Glenshee, and asked, " My man, were you ever 
fou' ? " " Ay, aince," speaking slowly, as if remembering, — 
« Ay, aince." " What on ? " " Cauld mutton ! " — J. B. 

2 Launce is a character in one of Shakespeare's comedies, and 
Crab is his dog. 



90 DR. JOHN BROWN. 

had got twopence : he — Toby's every morning crony, 
who met him and accompanied him up the street and 
licked the outside of his can — had, with an eye to 
speed and convenience, and a want of taste, not to 
say principle and affection, horrible still to think of, 
suspended Toby's animation beyond all hope. Wil- 
liam instantly fell upon him, upsetting his milk and 
cream, and gave him a thorough licking, to his own 
intense relief ; and, being late, he got from Pyper, 
who was a martinet, the customary palmies, which he 
bore with something approaching to pleasure. So 
died Toby : my father said little, but he missed and 
mourned his friend. 

There is reason to believe that, by one of those 
curious intertwistings of existence, the milk-boy was 
that one of the drowning party who got the penny of 
the twopence. 

WYLIE. 

Our next friend was an exquisite shepherd dog; 
fleet, thin-flanked, dainty, and handsome as a small 
greyhound, with all the grace of silky, waving black- 
and-tan hair. We got him thus. Being then young 
and keen botanists, and full of the knowledge and 
love of Tweedside, having been on every hill-top from 
Muckle Mendic to Hundleshope and the Lee Pen, 
and having fished every water from Tarth to the 
Leithen, we discovered early in spring that young 
Stewart, author of an excellent book on natural his- 
tory, a young man of great promise and early death, 
had found the Buxbaumia apliylla.^ a beautiful and 
odd-looking moss, west of Newbie heights, in the 
very month we were that moment in. We resolved 
to start next day. We walked to Peebles, and then 



OUR DOGS. 91 

up Haystoiin Glen to the cottage of Adam Cairns, 
tlie aged shepherd of the Newbie hirsel, of whom we 
knew, and who knew of ns from his daughter, Nancy 
Cairns, a servant with Uncle Aitken of Callands. 
We found our way up the burn with difficulty, as 
the evening was getting dark; and on getting near 
the cottage heard them at worship. We got in, and 
made ourselves known, and got a famous tea, and 
such cream and oat cake ! — old Adam looking on us 
as "clean dementit" to come out for "a bit moss," 
which, however, he knew, and vnth some pride said 
he would take us in the morning to the place. As 
we were going into a box bed for the night, two 
young men came in, and said they were "gaun to 
burn the water." Off we set. It was a clear, dark, 
starlight, frosty night. They had their leisters and 
tar torches, and it was something worth seeing, — the 
wild flame, the young fellows striking the fish coming 
to the light, — how splendid they looked with the 
light on their scales, coming out of the darkness, — 
the stimiblings and quenchings suddenly of the lights 
as the torch-bearer fell into a deep pooL We got 
home past midnight, and slept as we seldom sleep 
now. In the morning Adam, who had been long up, 
and bad been up the " Hope " with his dog, when he 
saw we had wakened, told us there was four inches 
of snow, and we soon saw it was too true. So we had 
to go home without our cryptogamic prize. 

It turned out that Adam, who was an old man and 
frail, and had made some money, was going at Whit- 
sunday to leave, and live with his son in Glasgow. 
We had been admiring the beauty and gentleness 
and perfect shape of Wylie, the finest colley I ever 
saw, aud said, " What are you going to do with 



92 DR. JOHN BROWN. 

Wylie?" '"Deed," says he, "I hardly ken. I can 
na think o' sellin' her, though she's worth four 
pound, and she '11 no like the toun." I said, " Would 
you let me have her ? " and Adam, looking at her 
fondly, — she came up instantly to him and made of 
him, — said, " Ay, I wull, if ye '11 be gude to her ; " 
and it was settled that when Adam left for Glasgow, 
she should be sent into Albany Street by the carrier. 

She came, and was at once taken to all our hearts, 
even grandmother liked her; and though she was 
often pensive, as if thinking of her master and her 
work on the hills, she made herself at home, and be- 
haved in all respects like a lady. When out with me, 
if she saw sheep in the streets or road, she got quite 
excited, and helped the work, and was curiously use- 
ful, the being so making her wonderfully happy. And 
so her little life went on, never doing wrong, always 
blithe and kind and beautiful. But some months 
after she came, there was a mystery about her : every 
Tuesday evening she disappeared ; we tried to watch 
her, but in vain, she was always off by nine P. M., and 
was away all night, coming back next day wearied 
and all over mud, as if she had travelled far. She 
slept all next day. This went on for some months, 
and we could make nothing of it. Poor dear creature, 
she looked at us wistfully when she came in, as if she 
would have told us if she could, and was especially 
fond, though tired. 

Well, one day I was walking across the Grass- 
market, with Wylie at my heels, when two shepherds 
started, and, looking at her, one said, " That 's her ; 
that 's the wonderfu* wee bitch that naebody kens." 
I asked him what he meant, and he told me that for 
months past she had made her appearance by the first 



OUR DOGS. 93 

daylight at the " buchts " or sheep-pens in the cattle- 
market, and worked incessantly, and to excellent pur- 
pose, in helping the shepherds to get their sheep and 
lambs in. The man said with a sort of transj^ort, 
" She 's a perfect meeracle ; flees about like a speerit, 
and never gangs wrang ; wears but never grups, and 
beats a' oor dowgs. She 's a perfect meeracle, and as 
soople as a maukin." Then he related how they all 
knew her, and said, " There 's that wee fell yin ; we '11 
get them in uoo." They tried to coax her to stop and 
be caught, but no, she was gentle, but off; and for 
many a day that "wee fell yin" was spoken of by 
these rough fellows. She continued this amateur 
work till she died, which she did in peace. 

It is very touching, the regard the south-country 
shepherds have to their dogs. Professor Syme one 
day, many years ago, when living in Forres Street, 
was looking out of his window, and he saw a young 
shepherd striding down North Charlotte Street, as if 
making for his house ; it was midsummer. The man 
had his dog with him, and Mr. Syme noticed that he 
followed the dog, and not it him, though he contrived 
to steer for the house. He came, and was ushered 
into his room ; he wished advice about some ailment, 
and Mr. Syme saw that he had a bit of twine round 
the dog's neck, which he let drop out of his hand 
when he entered the room. He asked him the mean- 
ing of this, and he explained that the magistrates had 
issued a mad-dog proclamation, commanding all dogs 
to be muzzled or led on pain of death. " And why do 
you go about as I saw you did before you came in to 
me?" "Oh," said he, looking awkward, "I did ua 
want Birkie to ken he was tied." Where will you 
find truer courtesy and fuier feeling ? He did n't want 
to hurt Birkie's feelings. 



94 DR. JOHN BROWN. 

Mr. Carruthers of Inverness told me a new story 
of these wise sheep dogs. A butcher from Inverness 
had purchased some sheep at Dingwall, and, giving 
them in charge to his dog, left the road. The dog 
drove them on till, coming to a toll, the toll-wife stood 
before the drove, demanding her dues. The dog 
looked at her, and, jumping on her back, crossed his 
forelegs over her arms. The sheep passed through, 
and the dog took his place behind them, and went on 
his way. 

RAB. 

Of Rab I have little to say, indeed have little right 
to speak of him as one of " our dogs ; " but nobody 
will be sorry to hear anything of that noble fellow. 
Ailie, the day or two after the operation, when she 
was well and cheery, spoke about him, and said she 
would tell me fine stories when I came out, as I prom- 
ised to do, to see her at Howgate. I asked her how 
James came to get him. She told me that one day 
she saw James coming down from Leadburn with the 
cart ; he had been away west, getting eggs and butter, 
cheese and hens, for Edinburgh. She saw he was in 
some trouble, and on looking, there was what she 
thought a young calf being dragged, or, as she called 
it, "haurled," at the back of the cart. James was in 
front, and when he came up, very warm and very 
angry, she saw that there was a huge young dog tied 
to the cart, struggling and pulling back with all his 
might, and, as she said, " lookin' fearsom." James, 
who was out of breath and temper, being past his 
time, explained to Ailie that this " muckle brute o' a 
whalp" had been worrying sheep, and terrifying 
everybody up at Sir George Montgomery's at Macbie 



OUR DOGS. 95 

Hill, and that Sir George had ordered him to be 
hanged, which, however, was sooner said than done, 
as " the thief " showed his intentions of dying hard. 
James came up just as Sir George had sent for his 
gun, and, as the dog had more than once shown a lik- 
ing for him, he said he " wad gie him a chance ; " and 
so he tied him to his cart. Young Kab, fearing some 
mischief, had been entering a series of protests all the 
way, and nearly strangling himself to spite James 
and Jess, besides giving Jess more than usual to do. 
" I wish I had let Sir George pit that charge into him, 
the thrawn brute ! " said James. But Ailie had seen 
that in his foreleg there was a splinter of wood, which 
he had likely got when objecting to be hanged, and 
that he was miserably lame. So she got James to 
leave him with her, and go straight into Edinburgh. 
She gave him water, and by her woman's wit got his 
lame paw under a door, so that he could n't suddenly 
get at her, then with a quick, firm hand she plucked 
out the splinter, and put in an ample meal. She went 
in some time after, taking no notice of him, and he 
came limping up, and laid his great jaws in her 
lap; from that moment they were "chief," as she 
said, James finding him mansuete and civil when he 
returned. 

She said it was Rab's habit to make his appearance 
exactly half an hour before his master, trotting in full 
of importance, as if to say, " He 's all right, he '11 be 
here." One morning James came without him. He 
had left Edinburgh very early, and in coming near 
Auchindinny, at a lonely part of the road, a man 
sprang out on him, and demanded his money. James, 
who was a cool hand, said, " Weel a weel, let me get 
it," and stepping back, he said to Rab, " Speak till 



96 DR. JOHN BROWN. 

him, my man." In an instant Rab was standing over 
liim, threatening strangulation if he stirred. James 
pushed on, leaving Rab in charge ; he looked back, 
and saw that every attempt to rise was summarily 
put down. As he was telling Ailie the story, up came 
Rab with that great swing of his. It turned out that 
the robber was a Howgate lad, the worthless son of a 
neighbor, and Rab knowing him had let him cheaply 
off ; the only thing, which was seen by a mau from a 
field, was, that before letting him rise, he quenched 
(pro tempore) the fire of the eyes of the ruffian by a 
familiar GuUiverian application of Hydraulics, which 
I need not further particularize. James, who did not 
know the way to tell an untruth, or embellish any- 
thing, told me this as what he called " a fact posi- 
teevelyJ^ 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

Alfred TE]snsrYSON, the most famous English poet of 
the latter half of the nineteenth century, was born August 
6, 1809, in the village of Somersby, in Lincolnshire, Eng- 
land. He was one of a large family of children, and at 
least one of his brothers showed also poetic genius. His 
father was rector of the English church in the quiet English 
village, and the young poet grew up in the shelter of a 
refined home. Mrs. Ritchie, a daughter of Thackeray, 
tells a pleasant story of the family life : — 

" These handsome children had, beyond most children, 
that wondrous toy at their command which some people 
call imagination. The boys played great games like Ar- 
thur's knights ; they were champions and warriors defend- 
ing a stone heap, or again they would set up opposing 
camps with a king in the midst of each. . . . When dinner- 
time came, and they all sat round the table, each in turn 
put a chapter of his history underneath the potato bowl, — 
long, endless histories, chapter after chapter, diffuse, ab- 
sorbing, unending, as are the stories of real life of which 
each sunrise opens on a new part ; some of these romances 
were in letters like Clarissa Harlowe. Alfred used to tell 
a story which lasted for months, and which was called The 
Old Horsed 

When Alfred and his brother Charles were scarcely more 
than boys, they published a book under the title Poems by 
Ttvo Brothers. A year after this little book came out, 



98 ALFRED TENNYSON, 

Alfred Tennyson was entered as a student at Trinity Col- 
lege, Cambridge, and there he formed friendships which 
lasted through life, though one friend, Arthur Hallam by 
name, the dearest of all, and the promised husband of Ten- 
nyson's sister, died in 1833. But he is connected with Ten- 
nyson's memory more than all who lived, for his death so 
moved the poet as to keep him silent for ten years. He 
had published a volume of poems after leaving the univer- 
sity, and again in 1832, but now he buried himself in study 
and meditation, seeing but few persons, and brooding over 
great thoughts which found expression in the series of 
poems afterward published under the title. In MemoriaTn 
A. H. H., that is, To the Memory of Arthur Henry Hallam. 
In this, one of the famous books of the century, Tennyson 
seeks to bring life and immortality to light. Carlyle de- 
scribes him thus at this time : — - 

" One of the finest-looking men in the world. A great 
shock of rough dusty-dark hair ; bright, laughing hazel eyes ; 
massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most delicate ; of 
sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-looking ; clothes 
cynically loose, free-and-easy ; smokes infinite tobacco. His 
voice is musical-metallic -—fit for loud laughter and pierc- 
ing wail, and all that may lie between ; speech and specu- 
lation free and plenteous : I do not meet, in these late 
decades, such company over a pipe ! " 

In Memoriam, though written during these ten years of 
half solitary life, was not published for some time. Mean- 
while, in 1842, his Poems appeared in two volumes, and 
gave him at once a high rank ; in 1847, he published The 
Princess, and when, in 1850, he published In Memoriam, 
he became the gi'eat successor of Wordsworth, who died this 
sam© year. He was appointed Poet Laureate in Words- 
worth's place, and thereafter was looked upon till his death, 
October 6, 1892, as the greatest of living English poets. 

His position as poet laureate led him to write, from 
time to time, noble patriotic poems, like the Ode on the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 99 

Death of the Duke of Wellington, and The Charge of the 
Light Brigade. He showed his ardent love of England in 
other ways. His Idylls of the King was a poetic effort to 
bring to modern minds the chivalric ideal as dimly shad- 
owed in the tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the 
Round Table. Maud was a passionate protest against a 
selfish indifference to national honor and mere regard for 
material wealth, and he wrote tragedies intended to recon- 
struct old English history. In 1884, he was made Baron 
of Aldworth and Farringford, so that thereafter he bore the 
title of Lord Tennyson. 

It is impossible to sum up in brief space an estimate of 
the essence of Tennyson's poetic greatness. In any analy- 
sis of it, the purity, elevation, and depth of thought, the 
pervading quality of imagination, and the constant beauty 
of structure must primarily be reckoned with. In other 
words, his mind was amply adequate to supplying him with 
the most noble and lovely themes, and his mastery over his 
art enabled him to put them into noble and lovely forms. 
He gathered up in himself many of the beauties of poets 
who went before him, and has won the tribute of so much 
imitation — ^ often by persons no doubt unconscious of imi- 
tating — that nearly the whole body of English poetry in 
our second half century has been different because of him. 



ENOCH ARDEN. 

Enoch Arden appeared as the principal poem of the volume 
bearing its name in 1864. It is the main product of a period 
of reaction from the work which dealt, in the Idylls of the 
King, with the great legends of England. As in other poems 
of its period, Tennyson attempted to draw near to the actual 
life of the English people. The sympathetic reader will feel 
especially in the poem the fitness of the means to the end in 
view ; the many metaphors of the sea, the stress that is laid 
upon the elements of superstition and the supernatural, — ele- 
ments well in keeping with the characters of the story. The 
beauty of the descriptive passages needs no pointing out. 

Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm ; 
And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands ; 
Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf 
In cluster ; then a moulder'd church ; and higher 
5 A long street climbs to one tall-tower'd mill ; 
And high in heaven behind it a gray down 
With Danish barrows ; and a hazelwood, 
By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes 
Green in a cuplike hollow of the down. 

10 Here on this beach a hundred years ago, 
Three children of three houses, Annie Lee, 
The prettiest little damsel in the port. 
And Philip Ray, the miller's only son. 
And Enoch Arden, a rough sailor's lad 

15 Made orphan by a winter shipwreck, play'd 

7. Danish barrows, burial mounds supposed to date from the 
Danish incursions into England. 



ENOCH ARDEN. 101 

Among the waste and lumber of the shore, 
Hard coils of cordage, swarthy fishing-nets, 
Anchors of rusty fluke, and boats updrawn ; 
And built their castles of dissolvins: sand 
20 To watch them overflow'd, or following up 
And flying the white breaker, daily left 
The little footprint daily wash'd away. 

A narrow cave ran in beneath the cliff ; 
In this the children play'd at keeping house. 

25 Enoch was host one day, Philip the next. 
While Annie still was mistress ; but at times 
Enoch would hold possession for a week : 
" This is my house and this my little wife." 
" Mine too," said Philip, " turn and turn about : " 

30 When, if they quarrell'd, Enoch stronger made 
Was master : then woidd Philip, his blue ej^es 
All flooded with the helpless wrath of tears, 
Shriek out, " I hate you, Enoch," and at this 
The little wife would weep for company, 

35 And pray them not to quarrel for her sake, 
And say she would be little wife to both. 

But when the dawn of rosy childhood past. 
And the new warmth of life's ascending sun 
Was felt by either, either fixt his heart 
40 On that one girl ; and Enoch spoke his love, 
But Philip loved in silence ; and the girl 
Seem'd kinder unto Philip than to him ; 
But she loved Enoch : tho' she knew it not, 
And would if ask'd deny it. Enoch set 
45 A purpose evermore before his eyes, 
36. A line which skillfully foreshadows the tragedy of the 
poem. 



102 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

To hoard all savings to the uttermost, 
To purchase his own boat, and make a home 
For Annie : and so prosper'd that at last 
A luckier or a bolder fisherman, 

50 A caref uller in peril, did not breathe 
For leagues along that breaker-beaten coast 
Than Enoch. Likewise had he served a year 
On board a merchantman, and made himself 
Full sailor ; and he thrice had pluck'd a life 

55 From the dread sweep of the down-streaming seas : 
And all men look'd upon him favorably : 
And ere he touch'd his one-and-twentieth May 
He purchased his own boat, and made a home 
For Annie, neat and nestlike, halfway up 

60 The narrow street that clamber'd toward the mill. 

Then, on a golden autumn eventide, 
The younger people making holiday. 
With bag and sack and basket, great and small, 
Went nutting to the hazels. Philip stay'd 

65 (His father lying sick and needing him) 
An hour behind ; but as he climb'd the hill, 
Just where the prone edge of the wood began 
To feather toward the hollow, saw the pair, 
Enoch and Annie, sitting hand-in-hand, 

70 His large gray eyes and weather-beaten face 
All-kindled by a still and sacred fire. 
That burn'd as on an altar. Philip look'd. 
And in their eyes and faces read his doom ; 
Then, as their faces drew together, groan'd, 

75 And slipt aside, and like a wounded life 

Crept down into the hollows of the wood ; 

54. Full sailor may be taken as equivalent to " able seaman." 
67, 68. Where the woods grew thinner and lighter. 



ENOCH ARDEN. 103 

There, while the rest were loud in merrymaking, 
Had his dark hour unseen, and rose and past 
Bearing a lifelong hunger in his heart. 

80 So these were wed, and merrily rang the bells, 
And merrily ran the years, seven happy years. 
Seven happy years of health and competence. 
And mutual love and honorable toil ; 
With children ; first a daughter. In him woke, 

85 With his first babe's first cry, the noble wish 
To save all earnings to the uttermost. 
And give his child a better bringing-up 
Than his had been, or hers ; a wish renew'd, 
When two years after came a boy to be 

90 The rosy idol of her solitudes, 
While Enoch was abroad on wrathful seas, 
Or often journeying landward ; for in truth 
Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean-spoil 
In ocean-smelling osier, and his face, 

95 Rough-redden 'd with a thousand winter gales, 
Not only to the market-cross were known, 
But in the leafy lanes behind the down. 
Far as the portal- warding lion-whelp 
And peacock-yewtree of the lonely Hall, 

100 Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering. 

Then came a change, as all things human chango. 
Ten miles to northward of the narrow port 
94. Osier, i. e. basket. 

96. Many Englisli villages have an old stone cross in the 
market-place. 

98. The heraldic device over the portal to the hall, supposed 
to stand as a guard (warding). 

99. A yew-tree cut, after the fashion of old gardening, into 
the form of a peacock. 



104 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

Open'd a larger haven : thither used 
Enoch at times to go by land or sea ; 

105 And once when there, and clambering on a mast 
In harbor, by mischance he slipt and fell : 

A limb was broken when they lifted him ; 
And while he lay recovering there, his wife 
Bore him another son, a sickly one : 

110 Another hand crept too across his trade 

Taking her bread and theirs : and on him fell, 
Altho' a grave and staid God-fearing man, 
Yet lying thus inactive, doubt and gloom. 
He seem'd, as in a nightmare of the night, 

U5 To see his children leading evermore 
Low miserable lives of hand-to-mouth, 
And her he loved, a beggar : then he pray'd 
" Save them from this, whatever comes to me." 
And while he pray'd, the master of that ship 

120 Enoch had served in, hearing his mischance, 
Came, for he knew the man and valued him, 
^Reporting of his vessel China-bound, 
And wanting yet a boatswain. Would he go ? 
There yet were many weeks before she sail'd, 

125 Sail'd from this port. Would Enoch have the 
place ? 
And Enoch all at once assented to it, 
Eejoicing at that answer to his prayer. 

So now that shadow of mischance appear'd 
No graver than as when some little cloud 
130 Cuts off the fiery highway of the sun. 

And isles a light in the offing : yet the wife — 
When he was gone — the children — what to do ? 

131. At sea on half cloudy days one often notices a bit of sun- 
light standing out on the water like an island. 



ENOCH ARDEN. 105 

Then Enoch lay long-pondering on his plans ; 
To sell the boat — and yet he loved her well — 

135 How many a rough sea had he weather' d in her ! 
He knew her, as a horseman knows his horse — 
And yet to sell her — then with what she brought 
Buy goods and stores — set Annie forth in trade 
With aU that seamen needed or their wives — 

140 So might she keep the house while he was gone. 
Should he not trade himself out yonder ? go 
This voyage more than once ? yea, twice or thrice — 
As oft as needed — last, returning rich, 
Become the master of a larger craft, 

145 With fuller profits lead an easier life. 
Have all his pretty young ones educated. 
And pass his days in peace among his own. 

Thus Enoch in his heart determined all : 
Then moving homeward came on Annie pale, 

150 Nursing the sickly babe, her latest-born. 
Forward she started with a happy cry. 
And laid the feeble infant in his arms ; 
Whom Enoch took, and handled all his limbs, 
Appraised his weight and fondled father-like, 

155 But had no heart to break his purposes 
To Annie, till the morrow, when he spoke. 

Then first since Enoch's golden ring had girt 
Her finger, Annie fought against his wiU : 
Yet not with brawling opposition she, 
160 But manifold entreaties, many a tear. 
Many a sad kiss by day by night renew'd 
(Sure that all evil would come out of it) 
142. Voyage must be read as a dissyllable, not too pro- 
nouncedly. 



106 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

Besougtit him, supplicating, if he cared 
For her or his dear children, not to go. 
165 He not for his own seK caring but her, 
Her and her children, let her plead in vain ; 
So grieving held his will, and bore it thro'. 

For Enoch parted with his old sea-friend, 
Bought Annie goods and stores, and set his hand 

170 To fit their little streetward sitting-room 

With shelf and corner for the goods and stores. 
So all day long till Enoch's last at home. 
Shaking their pretty cabin, hammer and axe, 
Auger and saw, while Annie seem'd to hear 

175 Her own death-scaffold raising, shrill'd and rang, 
Till this was ended, and his careful hand, — 
The space was narrow, — having order'd all 
Almost as neat and close as Nature packs 
Her blossom or her seedling, paused ; and he, 

180 Who needs would work for Annie to the last, 
Ascending tired, heavily slept till morn. 

And Enoch faced this morning of farewell 
Brightly and boldly. All his Annie's fears, 
Save as his Annie's, were a laughter to him. 

185 Yet Enoch as a brave God-fearing man 
Bow'd himseK down, and in that mystery 
Where God-in-man is one with man-in-God, 
Pray'd for a blessing on his wife and babes, 
Whatever came to him : and then he said 

190 " Annie, this voyage by the grace of God 
Will bring fair weather yet to all of us. 
Keep a clean hearth and a clear fire for me, 

165. Not an easy line to read with proper stress ; self should 
be dwelt upon, and a certain pause made after caring. 



ENOCH ARDEN. lOT 

For I '11 be back, my girl, before you know it." 
Then lightly rocking baby's cradle, " and he, 

195 This pretty, puny, weakly little one, — 
Nay — for I love him all the better for it — 
God bless him, he shall sit upon my knees 
And I will tell him tales of foreign parts, 
And make him merry, when I come home again. 

200 Come, Annie, come, cheer up before I go." 

Him running on thus hopefully she heard, 
And almost hoped herseK ; but when he turn'd 
The current of his talk to graver things. 
In sailor fashion roughly sermonizing 
205 On providence and trust in Heaven, she heard, 
Heard and not heard him ; as the village girl, 
Who sets her pitcher underneath the spring, 
Musing on him that used to fill it for her, 
Hears and not hears, and lets it overflow. 

210 At length she spoke, " O Enoch, you are wise ; 
And yet for all your wisdom well know I 
That I shall look upon your face no more." 

" Well then," said Enoch, " I shall look on yours. 
Annie, the ship I sail in passes here 
215 (He named the day), get you a seaman's glass. 
Spy out my face, and laugh at all your fears." 

But when the last of those last moments came, 
" Annie, my girl, cheer up, be comforted. 
Look to the babes, and till I come again, 
220 Keep everything shipshape, for I must go. 
And fear no more for me ; or if you fear 

213. Another significant prophecy, as in line 36. 



108 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

Cast all your cares on God ; that anchor holds. 
Is He not yonder in those uttermost 
Parts of the morning ? if I flee to these 
225 Can I go from him ? and the sea is His, 
The sea is His : He made it." 

Enoch rose, 
Cast his strong arms about his drooping wife. 
And kiss'd his wonder-stricken little ones ; 
But for the third, the sickly one, who slept 

230 After a night of feverous wakefulness, 

When Annie would have raised him Enoch said, 
"Wake him not; let him sleep; how should the 

child 
Eemember this ? " and kiss'd him in his cot. 
But Annie from her baby's forehead dipt 

235 A tiny curl, and gave it : this he kept 

Thro' all his future ; but now hastily caught 
His bundle, waved his hand, and went his way. 

She when the day, that Enoch mention'd, came, 
Borrow'd a glass, but all in vain : perhaps 
240 She could not fix the glass to suit her eye ; 
Perhaps her eye was dim, hand tremulous ; 
She saw him not : and while he stood on deck 
Waving, the moment and the vessel past. 

Ev'n to the last dip of the vanishing sail 
245 She watch'd it, and departed weej)ing for him ; 
Then, tho' she mourn'd his absence as his grave. 
Set her sad will no less to chime with his. 
But throve not in her trade, not being bred 

222-22G. The use of Bible language at this moment is quite 
in harmony with Enoch's character. 



ENOCH ARDEN. 109 

To barter, nor compensating the want • 

250 By shrewdness, neither capable of lies, 
Nor asking overmnch and taking less, 
And still foreboding " what would Enoch say?" 
For more than once, in days of difficulty 
And pressure, had she sold her wares for less 
255 Than what she gave in buying what she sold : 
She fail'd and sadden'd knowing it ; and thus. 
Expectant of that news which never came, 
Gain'd for her own a scanty sustenance. 
And lived a life of silent melancholy. 

260 Now the third child was sickly-born and grew 
Yet sicklier, tho' the mother cared for it 
With all a mother's care : nevertheless. 
Whether her business often call'd her from it, 
Or thro' the want of what it needed most, 

265 Or means to pay the voice who best could teU 
What most it needed — howsoe'er it was, 
After a lingering, — ere she was aware, — 
Like the caged bird escaping suddenly. 
The little innocent soul flitted away. 

270 In that same week when Annie buried it, 
Philip's true heart, which hunger'd for her peace 
(Since Enoch left he had not look'd upon her). 
Smote him, as having kept aloof so long. 
" Surely," said Philip, " I may see her now, 

275 May be some little comfort ; " therefore went, 
Past thro' the solitary room in front, 
Paused for a moment at an inner door, 
Then struck it thrice, and, no one opening, 
Enter'd ; but Annie, seated with her gi'ief, 

280 Fresh from the burial of her little one, 



110 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

Cared not to look on any human face, 
But turn'd her own toward the wall and wept. 
Then Philip standing up said f alteringly, 
" Annie, I came to ask a favor of you." 

285 He spoke ; the passion in her moan'd reply, 
" Favor from one so sad and so forlorn 
As I am ! " half abash'd him ; yet unask'd, 
His bashfulness and tenderness at war. 
He set himself beside her, saying to her : 

290 "I came to speak to you of what he wish'd, 
Enoch, your husband : I have ever said 
You chose the best among us — a strong man : 
For where he fixt his heart he set his hand 
To do the thing he will'd, and bore it thro'. 

295 And wherefore did he go this weary way. 
And leave you lonely ? not to see the world — 
For pleasure ? — nay, but for the wherewithal 
To give his babes a better bringing-up 
Than his had been, or yours : that was his wish. 

300 And if he come again, vext will he be 

To find the precious morning hours were lost. 
And it would vex him even in his grave, 
If he could know his babes were running wild 
Like colts about the waste. So, Annie, now — 

305 Have we not known each other all our lives ? — 
I do beseech you by the love you bear 
Him and his children not to say me nay — 
For, if you will, when Enoch comes again. 
Why then he shall repay me — if you will, 

310 Annie — for I am rich and well-to-do. 
Now let me put the boy and girl to school : 
This is the favor that I came to ask." 



ENOCH ARDEN. Ill 

Then Annie with lier brows against the wall 

Answer'd, " I cannot look you in the face ; 
315 1 seem so foolish and so broken down. 

When you came in my sorrow broke me down ; 

And now I think your kindness breaks me down ; 

But Enoch lives ; that is borne in on me ; 

He will repay you : money can be repaid ; 
320 Not kindness such as yours." 

And Philip ask'd 
" Then you will let me, Annie ? " 

There she tum'd, 
She rose, and fixt her swimming eyes upon him. 
And dwelt a moment on his kindly face, 
Then calling down a blessing on his head 
325 Caught at his hand, and wrung it passionately, 
And past into the little garth beyond. 
So lifted up in spirit he moved away. 

Then Philip put the boy and girl to school. 
And bought them needful books, and every way, 

330 Like one who does his duty by his own. 

Made himself theirs ; and tho' for Annie's sake, 
Fearing the lazy gossip of the port, 
He oft denied his heart his dearest wish. 
And seldom crost her threshold, yet he sent 

335 Gifts by the children, garden-herbs and fruit, 
The late and early roses from his wall, 
Or conies from the down, and now and then, 
With some pretext of fineness in the meal 
To save the offence of charitable, flour 

340 From his tall mill that whistled on the waste. 
339. To make it seem not like a gift of charity. 



112 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

But Philip did not fathom Annie's mind : 
Scarce could the woman when he came upon her, 
Out of full heart and boundless gratitude 
Light on a broken word to thank him with. 

345 But Philip was her children's all-in-all ; 
From distant corners of the street they ran 
To greet his hearty welcome heartily ; 
Lords of his house and of his mill were they ; 
Worried his passive ear with petty wrongs 

350 Or pleasures, hung upon him, play'd with him, 
And call'd him Father Philip. Philip gain'd 
As Enoch lost ; for Eeoch seem'd to them 
Uncertain as a vision or a dream. 
Faint as a figure seen in early dawn 

355 Down at the far end of an avenue. 

Going we know not where : and so ten years, 
Since Enoch left his hearth and native land. 
Fled forward, and no news of Enoch came. 

It chanced one evening Annie's children long'd 
360 To go with others nutting to the wood, 

And Annie would go with them ; then they begg'd 
For Father Philip (as they call'd him) too : 
Him, like the working bee in blossom-dust, 
Blanch'd with his mill, they found ; and saying to him, 
365 " Come with us. Father Philip," he denied ; 
But when the children pluck'd at him to go. 
He laugh'd, and yielded readily to their wish. 
For was not Annie with them ? and they went. 

But after scaling half the weary down, 
370 Just where the prone edge of the wood began 

370. The repetition here of the phrase in line 67 is one of the 
instances of the device used in the poem to bind together the 



ENOCH ARDEN. 113 

To feather toward the hollow, all her force 
Fail'd her ; and sighing, " Let me rest," she said : 
So Philip rested with her well-content ; 
While all the younger ones with jubilant cries 

375 Broke from their elders, and tumultuously 
Down thro' the whitening hazels made a plunge 
To the bottom, and dispersed, and bent or broke 
The lithe reluctant boughs to tear away 
Their tawny clusters, crying to each other 

380 And calling, here and there, about the wood. 

But Philip sitting at her side forgot 
Her presence, and remember'd one dark hour 
Here in this wood, when like a wounded life 
He crept into the shadow : at last he said, 

385 Lifting his honest forehead, " Listen, Annie, 
How merry they are down yonder in the wood. 
Tired, Annie ? " for she did not speak a word. 
" Tired ? " but her face had fall'n upon her hands ; 
At which, as with a kind of anger in him, 

390 " The ship was lost," he said, " the ship was lost ! 
No more of that ! why should you kill yourself 
And make them orphans quite ? " And Annie said 
" I thought not of it : but — I know not why — 
Their voices make me feel so solitary." 

395 Then Philip coming somewhat closer spoke. 
" Annie, there is a thing upon my mind. 
And it has been upon my mind so long. 
That tho' I know not when it first came there, 
I know that it will out at last. Oh, Annie, 

400 It is beyond all hope, against all chance, 

two parts of the tragedy and make it all one. Compare lines 
80 and 507, for a similar practice ; still others will be found. 



114 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

That he who left you ten long years ago 
Should still be living ; well then — let me speak : 
I grieve to see you poor and wanting help : 
I cannot help you as I wish to do 

405 Unless — they say that women are so quick — 
Perhaps you know what I would have you know — 
I wish you for my wife. I fain would prove 
A father to your children : I do think 
They love me as a father : I am sure 

410 That I love them as if they were mine own ; 
And I believe, if you were fast my wife, 
That after all these sad uncertain years, 
We might be still as happy as God grants 
To any of His creatures. Think upon it : 

415 For I am well-to-do — no kin, no care. 

No burthen, save my care for you and yours : 
And we have known each other all our lives. 
And I have loved you longer than you know." 

Then answered Annie ; tenderly she spoke : 
420 " You have been as God's good angel in our house. 
God bless you for it, God reward you for it, 
Philip, with something happier than myself. 
Can one love twice ? can you be ever loved 
As Enoch was ? what is it that you ask ? " 
425 " I am content," he answer'd, " to be loved 
A little after Enoch." " Oh," she cried. 
Scared as it were, " dear Philip, wait a while : 
If Enoch comes — but Enoch will not come — 
Yet wait a year, a year is not so long : 
430 Surely I shall be wiser in a year : 
Oh, wait a little ! " Philip sadly said, 
" Annie, as I have waited all my life 
I well may wait a little." " Nay," she cried, 



ENOCH ARDEN. 115 

" I am bound : you have my promise — in a year ; 
435 Will you not bide your year as I bide mine ? " 
And Philip answer'd, " I will bide my year." 

Here both were mute, till Philip glancing up 
Beheld the dead flame of the fallen day 
Pass from the Danish barrow overhead ; 

440 Then, fearing night and chill for Annie, rose, 
And sent his voice beneath him thro' the wood. 
Up came the children laden with their spoil ; 
Then all descended to the port, and there 
At Annie's door he paused and gave his hand, 

445 Saying gently, " Annie, when I spoke to you. 
That was your hour of weakness. I was wrong. 
I am always bound to you, but you are free." 
Then Annie weeping answered, " I am bound." 

She spoke ; and in one moment as it were, 

450 While yet she went about her household ways, 
Ev'n as she dwelt upon his latest words. 
That he had loved her longer than she knew, 
That autumn into autumn flash'd again, 
And there he stood once more before her face, 

455 Claiming her promise. "Is it a year ? " she ask'd. 
" Yes, if the nuts," he said, " be ripe again : 
Come out and see." But she — she put him off — 
So much to look to — such a change — a month — 
Give her a month — she knew that she was bound — 

460 A month — no more. Then Philip wdth his eyes 
Full of that lifelong hunger, and his voice 
Shakins: a little like a drunkard's hand, 
" Take your own time, Annie, take your own time. 
And Annie could have wept for pity of him ; 

465 And yet she held him on delayingly 



116 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

Witli many a scarce-believable excuse, 
Trying liis truth and his long-sufferance, 
Till half another year had slipt away. 

By this the lazy gossips of the port, 

470 Abhorrent of a calculation crost, 

Began to chafe as at a personal wrong. 
Some thought that Philip did but trifle with her; 
Some that she but held off to draw him on ; 
And others laugh'd at her and Philip too, 

475 As simple folk that knew not their own minds ; 
And one, in whom all evil fancies clung 
Like serpent eggs together, laughingly 
Would hint at worse in either. Her own son 
Was silent, tho' he often look'd his wish ; 

480 But evermore the daughter prest upon her 
To wed the man so dear to all of them 
And lift the household out of poverty ; 
And Philip's rosy face contracting grew 
Careworn and wan ; and all these things fell on her 

4S5 Sharp as reproach. 

At last one night it chanced 
That Annie could not sleep, but earnestly 
Pray'd for a sign, " my Enoch, is he gone ? " 
Then compass'd round by the blind wall of night 
Brook'd not the expectant terror of her heart, 
490 Started from bed, and struck herself a light, 
Then desperately seized the holy Book, 

470. Angry that their expectations were not fulfilled. 

491. From early times one form of divination has been to 
read a personal meaning in passages selected by chance from 
books. The -3Sneid of Virgil was often used, and in England 
the Bible has been put to the same service, by persons like 



ENOCH ARDEN. 117 

Suddenly set it wide to find a sign, 

Suddenly put her finger on tlie text, 

" Under the palm-tree." That was nothing to her : 
495 No meaning there : she closed the Book and slept : 

When lo ! her Enoch sitting on a height, 

Under a palm-tree, over him the Sun : 

" He is gone," she thought, " he is happy, he is 
singing 

Hosanna in the highest : yonder shines 
500 The Sun of Righteousness, and these be palms 

Whereof the happy people strowing cried 

' Hosanna in the highest ! ' " Here she woke. 

Resolved, sent for him and said wildly to him, 

" There is no reason why we should not wed." 
505 " Then for God's sake," he answer' d, " both our 
sakes. 

So you will wed me, let it be at once." 

So these were wed and merrily rang the bells, 
Merrily rang the bells and they were wed. 
But never merrily beat Annie's heart. 

510 A footstep seem'd to fall beside her path. 
She knew not whence ; a whisper on her ear, 
She knew not what ; nor loved she to be left 
Alone at home, nor ventured out alone. 
What ail'd her then, that ere she enter'd, often, 

515 Her hand dwelt lingeringly on the latch. 
Fearing to enter : Philip thought he knew : 
Such doubts and fears were common to her state, 

Annie, since the days of the Puritans. In George Eliot's 

AdamBede, Dinah Morris makes important use of the practice. 

" And when I 've opened the Bible for direction," she says, 

" I 've always lighted on some clear word to tell me where 

my work lay." 
494. Judges iv. 5. 



118 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

Being with child : but when her child was born, 
Then her new child was as herself renew'd, 
520 Then the new mother came about her heart, 
Then her good Philip was her all-in-all. 
And that mysterious instinct wholly died. 

And where was Enoch ? prosperously sail'd 
The ship Good Fortune, tho' at setting forth 

525 The Biscay, roughly ridging eastward, shook 
And almost overwhelm'd her, yet unvext 
She slipt across the summer of the world, 
Then after a long tumble about the Cape 
And frequent interchange of foul and fair, 

630 She passing thro' the summer world again. 
The breath of heaven came continually 
And sent her sweetly by the golden isles, 
Till silent in her oriental haven. 

There Enoch traded for himself, and bought 
535 Quaint monsters for the market of those times, 
A gilded dragon, also, for the babes. 

Less lucky her home-voyage : at first indeed 
Thro' many a fair sea-circle, day by day, 
Scarce-rocking her full-busted figure-head 
540 Stared o'er the ripple feathering from her bows : 
Then foUow'd calms, and then winds variable. 
Then baffling, a long course of them ; and last 
Storm, such as drove her under moonless heavens 
Till hard upon the cry of " breakers " came 

627. This of course refers to the region about the equator. 
537. Voyage here is more nearly one syllable. 
638. There is a constant impression at sea of being at the 
centre of a vast circle. 



ENOCH ARDEN. 119 

545 The crash of ruin, and the loss of all 

But Enoch and two others. Half the nisrht, 
Buoy'd upon floating tackle and broken spars, 
These drifted, stranding on an isle at morn 
Rich, but the loneliest in a lonely sea. 

550 No want was there of human sustenance, 

Soft fruitage, mighty nuts, and nourishing roots ; 
Nor save for pity was it hard to take 
The helpless life so wild that it was tame. 
There in a seaward-gazing mountain-gorge 

555 They built, and thatch'd with leaves of palm, a hut, 
Half hut, half native cavern. So the three, 
Set in this Eden of all plenteousness, 
Dwelt with eternal summer, ill-content. 

For one, the youngest, hardly more than boy, 
560 Hurt in that night of sudden ruin and wreck, 

Lay lingering out a five-years' death-in-life. 

They could not leave him. After he was gone. 

The two remaining found a fallen stem ; 

And Enoch's comrade, careless of himself, 
565 Fire-hollowing this in Indian fashion, fell 

Sun-stricken, and that other lived alone. 

In those two deaths he read God's warning, " Wait." 

The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns 
And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven, 
670 The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes, 
The lightning flash of insect and of bird, 
The lustre of the long convolvuluses 
That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran 
Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows 
563. Stem, a tree-trunk of which they tried to make a canoe. 



120 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

575 And glories of the broad belt of the world, 
All these he saw ; but what he fain had seen 
He could not see, the kindly human face, 
Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard 
The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, 

580 The league-long roller thundering on the reef. 
The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd 
And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep 
Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, 
As down the shore he ranged, or all day long 

585 Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, 
A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail : 
No sail from day to day, but every day 
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts 
Among the palms and ferns and precipices ; 

590 The blaze upon the waters to the east : 
The blaze upon his island overhead ; 
The blaze upon the waters to the west ; 
Then the great stars that globed themselves in 

Heaven, 
The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again 

595 The scarlet shafts of sunrise — but no sail. 

There often as he watch'd or seem'd to watch, 
So still, the golden lizard on him paused, 
A phantom made of many phantoms moved 
Before him, haunting him, or he himself 
600 Moved haunting people, things and jalaces, known 
Far in a darker isle beyond the line ; 
The babes, their babble, Annie, the small house, 
The climbing street, the mill, the leafy lanes, 

575. Broad belt of the world, the ocean ; the ancients, indeed, 
had such a conception of it. 

597. So much was he a part of nature. 



ENOCH ARDEN. 121 

The peacock-yewtree and the lonely Hall, 
605 The horse he drove, the boat he sold, the chill 
November dawns and dewy-glooming downs, 
The gentle shower, the smell of dying leaves, 
And the low moan of leaden-color'd seas. 

Once likewise, in the ringing of his ears, 
610 Tho' faintly, merrily — far and far away — 
He heard the pealing of his parish bells ; 
Then, tho' he knew not wherefore, started up 
Shuddering, and when the beauteous hateful isle 
Return'd upon him, had not his poor heart 
615 Spoken with That, which being everywhere 
Lets none who speaks with Him seem all alone, 
Surely the man had died of solitude. 

Thus over Enoch's early-silvering head 
The sunny and rainy seasons came and went 

620 Year after year. His hopes to see his own, 
And pace the sacred old familiar fields. 
Not yet had perish'd, when his lonely doom 
Came suddenly to an end. Another ship 
(She wanted water) blown by baffling winds, 

625 Like the Good Fortune, from her destined course, 
Stay'd by this isle, not knowing where she lay : 
For since the mate had seen at early dawn 
Across a break on the mist-wreathen isle 
The silent water slipping from the hills, 

630 They sent a crew that landing burst away 

In search of stream or fount, and fill'd the shores 
With clamor. Downward from his mountain gorge 
Stept the long-hair'd, long-bearded solitary, 
Brown, looking hardly human, strangely clad, 

635 Muttering and mumbling, idiot-like it seem'd, 



122 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

Witli inarticulate rage, and making signs 
They knew not what : and yet he led the way 
To where the rivulets of sweet water ran ; 
And ever as he mingled with the crew, 

640 And heard them talking, his long-bounden tongue 
Was loosen'd, till he made them understand ; 
Whom, when their casks were lill'd they took 

aboard 
And there the tale he ntter'd brokenly, 
Searee-i'redited at first but more and more, 

C45 Amazed and melted all who listen'd to it ; 

And clothes they gave him and free passage home ; 
But oft he work'd among the rest and shook 
His isolation from him. None of these 
Came from his county, or could answer him, 

too If question'd, aught of what he cared to Imow. 
And dull the voyage was with long delays, 
The vessel scarce sea-worthy ; but evermore 
His fancy tied before the lazy wind 
Eeturuing, till beneath a clouded moon 

600 He like a lover down thro' all his blood 
Drew in the dewy meadowy morning-breath 
Of England, blown across her ghostly wall : 
And that same morning officers and men 
Levied a kindly tax upon themselves, 

660 Pitying the lonely man, and gave him it : 
Then moving np the coast they landed him, 
Ev'n in that harbor whence he sail'd before. 

There Enoch spoke no word to any one. 

But homeward — home — what home? had he a 

home ? — 

G3S. Siceet water, not salt. 

651. Voyage, two syllables again. 

657. Her ghostly wall, the chalk cliffs of the south coast. 



ENOCH ARDEN. 123 

665 His home, lie walk'd. Bright was that afternoon, 
Sunny but chill ; till drawn tliro' either chasm, 
Where either haven open'd on the deeps, 
RoU'd a sea-haze and whelm'd the world in gray ; 
Cut off the length of highway on before, 

670 And left but narrow breadth to left and right 
Of wither'd holt or tilth or pasturage. 
On the nigh-naked tree the robin piped 
Disconsolate, and thro' the dripping haze 
The dead weight of the dead leaf bore it down : 

675 Thicker the drizzle grew, deeper the gloom ; 
Last, as it seem'd, a great mist-blotted light 
Flared on him, and he came upon the place. 

Then down the long street having slowly stolen. 
His heart foreshadowing all calamity, 

680 His eyes upon the stones, he reach'd the home 
Where Annie lived and loved him, and his babes 
In those far-off seven happy years were born ; 
But finding neither light nor murmur there 
(A bill of sale gleam'd thro' the drizzle) crept 

685 Still downward thinking, " dead, or dead to me ! " 

Down to the pool and narrow wharf he went, 
Seeking: a tavern which of old he knew, 
A front of timber-crost antiquity. 
So propt, worm-eaten, ruinously old, 
690 He thought it must have gone ; but he was gone 
Who kept it ; and his widow, Miriam Lane, 
With daily-dwindling profits held the house ; 

667. See lioe 102. 

688. A house of plaster crossed with timbers, "half-tim- 
bered " as it is called ; a style of architecture made famdiar by 
the pictures of Shakespeare's birthplace. 



124 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

A haunt of brawling seamen once, but now 
Stiller, with yet a bed for wandering men. 
695 There Enoch rested silent many days. 

But Miriam Lane was good and garrulous, 
Nor let him be, but often breaking in. 
Told him, with other annals of the port. 
Not knowing — Enoch was so brown, so bow'd, 

700 So broken — all the story of his house. 
His baby's death, her growing poverty, 
How Philip put her little ones to school, 
And kept them in it, his long wooing her. 
Her slow consent, and marriage, and the birth 

705 Of Philip's child : and o'er his countenance 
No shadow past, nor motion : any one. 
Regarding, well had deem'd he felt the tale 
Less than the teller ; only when she closed, 
" Enoch, poor man, was cast away and lost," 

710 He, shaking his gray head pathetically, 
Repeated muttering, " cast away and lost ; " 
Again in deeper inward whispers, "lost! " 

But Enoch yearned to see her face again ; 
" If I might look on her sweet face again 

715 And know that she is happy." So the thought 
Haunted and harass'd him, and drove him forth, 
At evening when the dull November day 
Was growing duller twilight, to the hill. 
There he sat down gazing on all below ; 

720 There did a thousand memories roll upon him, 
Unspeakable for sadness. By and by 
The ruddy square of comfortable light. 
Far-blazing from the rear of Philip's house, 
Allured him, as the beacon-blaze allures 



ENOCH ARDEN. 125 

725 The bird of passage, till he madly strikes 
Against it, and beats out his weary life. 

For Philip's dwelling fronted on the street, 
The latest house to landward ; but behind, 
With one small gate that open'd on the waste, 

730 Flourish'd a little garden square and wall'd : 
And in it throve an ancient evergreen, 
A yewtree, and all round it ran a walk 
Of shingle, and a walk divided it: 
But Enoch shunn'd the middle walk and stole 

735 Up by the wall, behind the yew ; and thence 
That which he better might have shunn'd, if griefs 
Like his have worse or better, Enoch saw. 

For cups and silver on the burnish'd board 
Sparkled and shone ; so genial was the hearth : 

740 And on the right hand of the hearth he saw 
Philip, the slighted suitor of old times, 
Stout, rosy, with his babe across his knees ; 
And o'er her second father stoopt a girl, 
A later but a loftier Annie Lee, 

745 Fair-hair'd and tall, and from her lifted hand 
Dangled a length of ribbon and a ring 
To tempt the babe, who rear'd his creasy arras, 
Caught at, and ever miss'd it, and they laugh'd : 
And on the left hand of the hearth he saw 

750 The mother glancing often toward her babe. 
But turning now and then to speak with him, 
Her son, who stood beside her tall and strong, 
And saying that which pleased him, for he smiled. 

728. ia/es/, last. 

733. Shingle, gravel from the seashore. 



126 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

^ow when tlie dead man come to life beheld 
755 His wife his wife no more, and saw the babe 
Hers, yet not his, upon the father's knee, 
And all the warmth, the peace, the happiness, 
And his own children tall and beautiful, 
And him, that other, reigning in his place, 
760 Lord of his rights and of his children's love, — 
Then he, tho' Miriam Lane had told him all, 
Because things seen are mightier than things heard, 
Stagger'd and shook, holding the branch, and f ear'd 
To send abroad a shrill and terrible cry, 
765 Which in one moment, like the blast of doom, 
Would shatter all the happiness of the hearth. 

He therefore turning softly like a thief, 
Lest the harsh shingle should grate underfoot. 
And feeling all along the garden wall, 
770 Lest he should swoon and tumble and be found. 
Crept to the gate, and open'd it, and closed. 
As lightly as a sick man's chamber-door. 
Behind him, and came out upon the waste. 

And there he would have knelt, but that his knees 
775 Were feeble, so that falling prone he dug 
His fingers into the wet earth, and pray'd. 

" Too hard to bear ! why did they take me thence ? 
O God Almighty, blessed Saviour, Thou 
That didst uphold me on my lonely isle, 
780 Uphold me. Father, in my loneliness 
A little longer ! aid me, give me strength 
Not to tell her, never to let her know. 
Help me not to break in upon her peace. 
My children too ! must I not speak to these ? 



ENOCH ARDEN. 127 

785 They know me not. I should betray myself. 
Never : no father's kiss for me — the oirl 
So like her mother, and the boy, my son." 

There speech and thought and nature f ail'd a little 
And he lay tranced ; but when he rose and paced 
790 Back toward his solitary home again, 

All down the long and narrow street he went 
Beating it in upon his weary brain. 
As tho' it were the burthen of a song, 
" Not to tell her, never to let her know." 

795 He was not all unhappy. His resolve 
Upbore him, and firm faith, and evermore 
Prayer from a living source within the will, 
And beating up thro' all the bitter world, 
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea, 

800 Kept him a living soul. " This miller's wife," 
He said to Miriam, " that you spoke about. 
Has she no fear that her first husband lives ? " 
" Ay, ay, poor soul," said Miriam, " fear enow ! 
If you could tell her you had seen him dead, 

805 Why, that would be her comfort ; " and he thought 
" After the Lord has call'd me she shall know, 
I wait His time ;" and Enoch set himself. 
Scorning an alms, to work whereby to live. 
Almost to all things could he turn his hand. 

810 Cooper he was and carpenter, and wrought 
To make the boatmen fishing-nets, or help'd 
At lading and unlading the tall barks, 
That brought the stinted commerce of those days ; 
Thus earn'd a scanty living for himself : 

815 Yet since he did but labor for himself, 
799. See line 638. 



128 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

Work without hope, there was not life in it 
Whereby the man could live ; and as the year 
EoU'd itself round again to meet the day 
When Enoch had return'd, a languor came 

820 Upon him, gentle sickness, gradually 

Weakening the man, till he could do no more, 
But kept the house, his chair, and last his bed. 
And Enoch bore his weakness cheerfully. 
For sure no gladlier does the stranded wreck 

825 See thro' the gray skirts of a lifting squall 
The boat that bears the hope of life approach 
To save the life despair'd of, than he saw 
Death dawning on him, and the close of all. - 

For thro' that dawning gleam'd a kindlier hope 

830 On Enoch thinking, " after I am gone. 
Then may she learn I lov'd her to the last." 
He call'd aloud for Miriam Lane and said 
" Woman, I have a secret — only swear. 
Before I tell you — swear upon the book 

835 Not to reveal it, till you see me dead." 

"Dead," clamor'd the good woman, " hear him talk; 
I warrant, man, that we shall bring you round." 
" Swear," added Enoch sternly, " on the book." 
And on the book, half-frighted, Miriam swore. 

840 Then Enoch rolling his gray eyes upon her, 
" Did you know Enoch Arden of this town ? " 
" Know him? " she said, " I knew him far away. 
Ay, ay, I mind him coming down the street ; 
Held his head high, and cared for no man, he." 

845 Slowly and sadly Enoch answer'd her : 

" His head is low, and no man cares for him. 
I think I have not three days more to live ; 
I am the man." At which the woman gave 



ENOCH ARDEN. 129 

A half -incredulous, half-hysterical cry. 

850 " You Arden, you ! nay, — sure he was a foot 
Higher than you be." Enoch said again 
" My God has bow'd me down to what I am ; 
My grief and solitude have broken me ; 
Nevertheless, know you that I am he 

855 Who married — but that name has twice been 
changed — 
I married her who married Philip Eay. 
Sit, listen." Then he told her of his voyage, 
His wreck, his lonely life, his coming back, 
His gazing in on Annie, his resolve, • 

860 And how he kept it. As the woman heard, 
Fast flow'd the current of her easy tears. 
While in her heart she yearn'd incessantly 
To rush abroad all round the little haven, 
Proclaiming Enoch Arden and his woes ; 

865 But awed and promise-bounden she forbore. 
Saying only, " See your bairns before you go ! 
Eh, let me fetch 'em, Arden," and arose 
Eager to bring them down, for Enoch hung 
A moment on her words, but then replied. 

870 " Woman, disturb me not now at the last, 
But let me hold my purpose tiU I die. 
Sit down again ; mark me and understand. 
While I have power to speak. I charge you now 
When you shall see her, tell her that I died 

875 Blessing her, praying for her, loving her ; 
Save for the bar between us, loving her 
As when she lay her head beside my own. 
And tell my daughter Annie, whom I saw 
865. Bounden, an old form of bound, here iised, doubtless, iu 

large mea,sure for the metre's sake. 



130 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

So like lier motlier, that my latest breath 
880 Was spent in blessing her and praying for iter. 

And tell my son that I died blessing him. 

And say to Philip that I blest him too ; 

He never meant us any thing but good. 

But if my children care to see me dead, 
885 Who hardly knew me living, let them come, 

I am their father ; but she must not come, 

For my dead face would vex her after-life. 

And now there is but one of all my blood. 

Who will embrace me in the world-to-be : 
890^This hair is his : she cut it off and gave it, 

And I have borne it with me all these years, 

And thought to bear it with me to my grave ; 

But now my mind is changed, for I shall see him, 

My babe in bliss : wherefore when I am gone, 
895 Take, give her this, for it may comfort her : 

It will moreover be a token to her, 

That I am he." 

He ceased ; and Miriam Lane 
Made such a voluble answer promising all, 
That once again he roU'd his eyes upon her 
900 Repeating all he wish'd, and once again 
She promised. 

Then the third night after this, 
While Enoch slumber'd motionless and pale, 
And Miriam watch'd and dozed at intervals, 
There came so loud a calling of the sea, 
905 That all the houses in the haven rang. 

He woke, he rose, he spread his arms abroad. 

Crying with a loud voice " A sail ! a sail ! 

I am saved ; " and so fell back and spoke no more 



THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE. 131 

So past the strong heroic soul away. 
910 And when they buried him the little port 
Had seldom seen a costlier fimeral. 

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE. 

The Charge of the Light Brigade was first printed in a London 
daily newspaper in December, 1854, with a note by the author 
saying it was prompted by his " reading the first report of the 
Times* correspondent, where only six hundred and seven sabres 
are mentioned as having taken part in the charge." Balaklava, 
where the charge took place, was the British headquarters, in 
the Crimean War, from September, 1854, to June, 1856 ; the 
charge itself was made October 25, 1854. From the military 
point of view it was an absurd and hopeless movement. The 
order which occasioned it was a blunder. Captain Nolan, on 
whom it fell to deliver the command, was the first man to die. 

In the volume of 1855, the poem appeared considerably 
amended, but the changes were so criticised that the poet re- 
stored the lines more nearly to their original form. Moreover, 
he had a thousand copies of them printed in leaflets for distribu- 
tion among the soldiers before Sebastopol ; for he had heard 
how they liked the poem, and wanted them, as he said in a note 
printed with it, " to know that those who sit at home love and 
honor them." 



Half a league, half a league, 
Half a league onward, . 
All in the valley of Death 

Rode the six hundred. 
5 " Forward the Light Brigade ! 
Charge for the guns ! " he said : 
Into the valley of Death 

Rode the six hundred. 



132 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

II. 

" Forward the Light Brigade I " 
10 Was there a man dismay'd ? 
Not tho' the soldier knew 

Some one had blunder'd : 
Theirs not to make reply, 
Theirs not to reason why, 
15 Theirs but to do and die : 
Into the valley of Death 
Rode the six hundred. 

III. 

Cannon to right of them. 
Cannon to left of them, 
20 Cannon in front of them 
VoUey'd and thunder'd : 
Storm'd at with shot and shell, 
Boldly they rode and well, 
Into the jaws of Death, 
25 Into the mouth of Hell 
Rode the six hundred. 

IV. 

Flash'd all their sabres bare, 
Flash'd as they turn'd in air, 
Sabring the gunners there, 

30 Charging an army, while 
All the world wonder'd : 
Plunged in the battery-smoke 
Right thro' the line they broke ; 
Cossack and Russian 

35 Reel'd from the sabre-stroke 
Shatter'd and sunder'd. 



THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR. 133 

Then they rode back, but not — 
Not the six hundred. 

V. 

Cannon to right of them, 
40 Cannon to left of them, 

Cannon behind them 
Volley 'd and thunder'd ; 

Storm'd at with shot and shell, 

While horse and hero fell, 
45 They that had fought so well 

Came thro' the jaws of Death 

Back from the mouth of Hell, 

All that was left of them, 
Left of six hundred. 

VI. 

50 When can their glory fade ? 

Oh, the wild charge they made ! 
Ail the world wonder'd. 

Honor the charge they made ! 

Honor the Light Brigade, 
55 Noble six hundred ! 



THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR. 

Full knee-deep lies the winter snow. 
And the winter winds are wearily sighing : 
Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow, 
And tread softly and speak low, 
5 For the old year lies a-dying. 

Old year, you must not die ; 

You came to us so readily, 



134 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

You lived with us so steadily, 
Old year, you shall not die. 

10 He lieth still : lie dotli not move : 
He will not see the dawn of day. 
He hath no other life above. 
He gave me a friend, and a true true-love, 
And the New-year will take 'em away. 
15 Old year, you must not go ; 

So long as you have been with us, 
Such joy as you have seen with us, 
Old year, you shall not go. 

He froth'd his bumpers to the brim ; 
20 A jollier year we shall not see. 
But tho' his eyes are waxing dim. 
And tho' his foes speak ill of him. 
He was a friend to me. 

Old year, you shall not die ; 
25 We did so laugh and cry with you, 

I 've half a mind to die with you, 
Old year, if you must die. 

He was full of joke and jest, 
But all his merry quips are o'er. 
30 To see him die, across the waste 
His son and heir doth ride post-haste, 
But he '11 be dead before. 
Every one for his own. 
The night is starry and cold, my friend, 
35 And the New -year blithe and bold, my 

friend, 
Comes up to take his own. 



CROSSING THE BAR. 135 

How hard he breathes ! over the snow 
I heard just now the crowing cock. 
The shadows flicker to and fro : 
40 The cricket chirps : the light burns low : 
'T is nearly twelve o'clock. 

Shake hands, before you die. 
Old year, we '11 dearly rue for you : 
What is it we can do for you ? 
45 Speak out before you die. 

His face is growing sharp and thin. 
Alack ! our friend is gone. 
Close up his eyes : tie up his chin : 
Step from the corpse, and let him in 
50 That standeth there alone, 

And waiteth at the door. 

There 's a new foot on the floor, my friend, 

And a new face at the door, my friend, 

A new face at the door. 



CROSSING THE BAR. 

Crossing the Bar was contained in the volume of 1889, De- 
meter and Other Poems. For a singer of eighty years to strike 
so truly lyrical a note, to show himself as eminently a poet as in 
his prime, was not the least of Tennyson's achievements. The 
verses were sung at the poet's funeral in Westminster Abbey. 
The last poem he wrote, with music by Lady Tennyson, was also 
a part of the service. 

Sunset and evening star, 

And one clear call for me ! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar. 
When I put out to sea, 
3. Moaning of the bar. A familiar line in Charles Kingsley's 



136 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

6 But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 
Too full for sound and foam, 
When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
Turns again home. 

Twilight and evening bell, 
10 And after that the dark ! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell. 
When I embark ; 

For though from out our bourne of time and place 
The flood may bear me far, 
15 1 hope to see my Pilot face to face 
When I have crost the bar. 

poem, The Three Fishers, comes to mind, — " And the harbor 
bar be moaning." 





la 



^^:/^ytrt^ /A^^^^ 




CHAELES DICKENS. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

Charles Dickens was born at Portsmouth, England, 
February 7, 1812 ; he died June 9, 1870. He was born of 
an obscure family, his father holding a small clerkship in a 
government office ; he died perhaps the most widely known 
Englishman of his day, and he became widely known through 
the vast number of men, women, and children whom he 
imagined and then told stories about. Some one has counted 
the number, and it falls but little short of nineteen hundred. 
He had a childhood of varied experience. His family 
moved from place to place, and his father, a man of happy- 
go-lucky temper, was part of the time obliged to be in prison, 
for in the early part of the century men who could not pay 
their debts were shut up in prison till they could. 

This varied experience gave Dickens, who had a sensitive 
memory, a vast fund of material upon which he could draw 
when relating the childhood, as he often did, of the heroes 
of his stories. He had some schooling, and for a time was 
in a lawyer's office, but finally found a more congenial occu- 
pation as reporter on a daily newspaper. Here he was in 
his element, for he had a marvellously quick eye for what- 
ever was a little out of the common, and a nimble pen wlien 
he came to describe it. He was very fond also of going to 
the theatre, and at one time seriously considered whether 
he should not become an actor. If he had been an actor he 
would have been a very clever one, and might have written 
an actor's reminiscences. Instead of that, he played all his 



138 CHARLES DICKENS. 

life at being a player, taking part in a great many amateur 
performances, but made his real business story-telling. 

His story-telling grew out of his reporter's work. He 
tried his hand at graphic sketches in the paper with which 
he was connected, and quickly discovered that he had a tal- 
ent which he could use. A firm of young publishers wanted 
some sketches to accompany some comic pictures, and ap- 
plied to Dickens. Out of this grew the famous Pickwick 
Papers. In a very short time, instead of Dickens writing 
to accompany an artist, artists were eager to draw pictures 
to accomj)any his writing. His splendid power of vivid 
portraiture enabled him to draw characters like Pickwick 
and Sam Weller that were welcomed with delight by read- 
ers, and his abounding spirit and good-natured fun kept 
him gayly throwing out story after story, and inventing 
more and more amusing personages. 

His success was immediate, and perhaps somewhat intox- 
icating, for this constant drain on his faculty of imagination, 
and the demand of readers and publishers, left him no hours 
of rest. He travelled, coming twice to America, but more 
often going to France and Switzerland ; he managed com- 
panies of amateur actors for this or that charity, and at 
last, finding how eager people were to hear him read his own 
stories, he added to his task of writing that of reading in 
public, and under this weight of forced work and worry he 
broke down at last. 

But he left behind him a great mass of fiction and narra- 
tive and sketches and plays, which has been published again 
and again as fresh readers come forward, and it is not 
likely that he will soon cease to be one of the most popular 
writers in the English language. One great reason for this 
is the sympathy which he showed with the poor. He was 
buried in Westminster Abbey, London, where great kings 
and greater poets lie. "The funeral," said Stanley, the 
Dean of Westminster, " was strictly private. It took place 
at an early hour in the summer morning, the grave having 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 139 

been dug in secret the night before, and the vast solitary 
space of the Abbey was occupied only by the small band of 
the mourners, and the Abbey clergy, who, without any 
music, except the occasional peal of the organ, read the 
funeral service. For days the spot was visited by thou- 
sands. Many were the tears shed by the poorer visitors." 

Kingdoms and republics may change into new forms of 
social life, but the poor we have with us always, and Dick- 
ens was the poet, the prophet, the historian, the interpreter 
of the poor. 



THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS.^ 
I. 

IN THE OLD CITY OF ROCHESTER. 

Stkictly speaking, there were only six Poor Trav- 
ellers ; but being a Traveller myself, though an idle 
one, and being withal as poor as I hope to be, I 
brought the number up to seven. This word of 
explanation is due at once, for what says the inscrip- 
tion over the quaint old door ? 

RiCHAED Watts, Esq., 

by his Will, dated 22 Aug. 1579, 

founded this Charity 

for Six Poor Travellers, 

who, not being Rogues or Peoctors, 

May receive gratis for one Night 

Lodging, Entertainment, 

and Fourpence each. 

It was in the ancient little city of Rochester in 
Kent, of all the good days in the year upon a Christ- 
mas Eve, that I stood reading this inscription over 
the quaint old door in question. I had been wander- 
ing about the neighboring Cathedral, and had seen 

^ Dickens, besides his famous Christmas stories, wrote from 
time to time, in company with friends, parts of groups of stories. 
Here, for instance, is the opening chapter of a collection, to 
which one and another contributed. 



THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 141 

the tomb of Richard Watts, with the effigy of worthy 
Master Richard starting out of it like a ship's fio-ure- 
head ; and I had felt that I could do no less, as I 
gave the Verger his fee, than inquire the way to 
Watts's Charity. The way being very short and very 
plain, I had come prosperously to the inscription and 
the quaint old door. 

" Now," said I to myself, as I looked at the knocker, 
" I know I am not a Proctor ; I wonder whether I 
am a Rogue ! " 

Upon the whole, though Conscience reproduced 
two or three pretty faces which might have had 
smaller attraction for a moral Goliath than they had 
had for me, who am but a Tom Thumb in that way, 
I came to the conclusion that I was not a Rogue. So 
beginning to regard the establishment as in some sort 
my property, bequeathed to me and divers co-legatees, 
share and share alike, by the Worshipful Master 
Richard Watts, I stepped backward into the road to 
survey my inheritance. 

I found it to be a clean, white house, of a staid and 
venerable air, with the quaint old door already three 
times mentioned (an arched door), choice little long 
low lattice windows, and a roof of three gables. The 
silent High Street of Rochester is full of gables, with 
old beams and timbers carved into strange faces. It 
is oddly garnished with a queer old clock that projects 
over the pavement out of a grave red brick building, 
as if Time carried on business there, and hung out 
his sign. Sooth to say, he did an active stroke of 
work in Rochester, in the old days of the Romans, 
and the Saxons, and the Normans ; and down to the 
times of King John, when the rugged Castle — I will 
not undertake to say how many hundreds of years old 



142 CHARLES DICKENS. 

then — was abandoned to the centuries of weather 
which have so defaced the dark apertures in its walls 
that the ruin looks as if the rooks and daws had 
picked its eyes out. 

I was very well pleased, both with my property 
and its situation. While I was yet surveying it 
with growing content, I espied, at one of the upper 
lattices which stood open, a decent body, of a whole- 
some matronly appearance, whose eyes I caught 
inquiringly addressed to mine. They said so plainly, 
" Do you wish to see the house ? " that I answered 
aloud, " Yes, if you please." And within a minute 
the old door opened, and I bent my head, and went 
down two steps into the entry. 

"This," said the matronly presence, ushering me 
into a low room on the right, " is where the Travellers 
sit by the fire, and cook what bits of suppers they 
buy with their fourpences." 

" Oh ! Then they have no Entertainment ? " said 
I. For the inscription over the outer door was still 
running in my head, and I was mentally repeating, 
in a kind of tune, " Lodging, entertainment, and four- 
pence each." 

" They have a fire provided for 'em," returned the 
matron, — a mighty civil person, not, as I could make 
out, overpaid ; " and these cooking utensils. And 
this what 's painted on a board is the rules for their 
behavior. They have their fourpences when they 
get their tickets from the steward over the way, — 
for I don't admit 'em myself, they must get their 
tickets first, — and sometimes one buys a rasher of 
bacon, and another a herring, and another a pound 
of potatoes, or what not. Sometimes two or three of 
'em will club their fourpences together, and make a 



THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 143 

supper that way. But not much of anything is to 
be got for fourpence, at present, when provisions is so 
dear." 

" True, indeed," I remarked. I had been looking 
about the room, admiring its snug fireside at the 
upper end, its glimpse of the street through the low 
mullioned window, and its beams overhead. "It is 
very comfortable," said I. 

" Ill-con wenient," observed the matronly presence. 

I liked to hear her say so ; for it showed a com- 
mendable anxiety to execute in no niggardly spirit 
the intentions of Master Richard Watts. But the 
room was really so weU adapted to its purpose that 
I protested, quite enthusiastically, against her dispar- 
agement. 

" Nay, ma'am," said I, " I am sure it is warm in 
winter and cool in summer. It has a look of homely 
welcome and soothing rest. It has a remarkably cosy 
fireside, the very blink of which, gleaming out into 
the street upon a winter night, is enough to warm all 
Rochester's heart. And as to the convenience of the 
Six Poor Travellers " — 

" I don't mean them," returned the presence. " I 
speak of its being an ill-conwenience to myself and 
my daughter, having no other room to sit in of a 
night." 

This was true enough, but there was another quaint 
room of corresponding dimensions on the opjiosite side 
of the entry ; so I stepped across to it, through the 
open doors of both rooms, and asked what this cham- 
ber was for. 

"This," returned the presence, "is the Board 
Room; where the gentlemen meet when they come 
here." 



144 CHARLES DICKENS. 

Let me see. I had counted from the street six up- 
per windows besides these on the ground-story. Mak- 
ing a perplexed calculation in my mind, I rejoined, 
" Then the Six Poor Travellers sleep upstairs ? " 

My new friend shook her head. " They sleep," 
she answered, " in two little outer galleries at the 
back, where their beds has always been, ever since the 
Charity was founded. It being so very ill-conwenient 
to me as things is at present, the gentlemen are going 
to take off a bit of the back-yard, and make a slip of 
a room for 'em there, to sit in before they go to bed." 

" And then the Six Poor Travellers," said I, " will 
be entirely out of the house ? " 

" Entirely out of the house," assented the presence, 
comfortably smoothing her hands. " Which is con- 
sidered much better for all parties, and much more 
conwenient." 

I had been a little startled, in the Cathedral, by 
the emphasis with which the effigy of Master Richard 
Watts was bursting out of his tomb ; but I began to 
think, now, that it might be expected to come across 
the High Street some stormy night, and make a dis- 
turbance here. 

Howbeit, I kept my thoughts to myself, and accom- 
panied the presence to the little galleries at the back. 
I found them on a tiny scale, like the galleries in old 
inn-yards ; and they were very clean. While I was 
looking at them, the matron gave me to understand 
that the prescribed number of Poor Travellers were 
forthcoming every night from year's end to year's 
end; and that the beds were always occupied. My 
questions upon this, and her replies, brought us back 
to the Board Room so essential to the dignity of 
" the gentlemen," where she showed me the printed 



THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 145 

accounts of the Charity hanging up by the window. 
From them I gathered that the greater part of the 
property bequeathed by the Worshipful Master Rich- 
ard Watts for the maintenance of this foundation 
was, at the period of his death, mere marsh-land ; but 
that, in course of time, it had been reclaimed and 
built upon, and was very considerably increased in 
value. I found, too, that about a thirtieth part of the 
annual revenue was now expended on the purposes 
commemorated in the inscription over the door ; the 
rest being handsomely laid out in Chancery, law ex- 
penses, collector ship, receivership, poundage, and other 
appendages of management, highly complimentary to 
the importance of the Six Poor Travellers. In short, 
I made the not entirely new discovery that it may be 
said of an establishment like this, in dear old Eng- 
land, as of the fat oyster in the American story, that 
it takes a good many men to swallow it whole. 

" And pray, ma'am," said I, sensible that the blank- 
ness of my face began to brighten as a thought oc- 
curred to me, " could one see these Travellers ? " 

" Well ! " she returned dubiously, " no ! " 

" Not to-night, for instance ? " said I. 

" Well! " she returned more positively, "no. No- 
body ever asked to see them, and nobody ever did see 
them." 

As I am not easily balked in a design when I am 
set upon it, I urged to the good lady that this was 
Christmas Eve ; that Christmas comes but once a year, 
— which is unhappily too true, for when it begins to 
stay with us the whole year round we shall make this 
earth a very different place ; that I was possessed by the 
desire to treat the Travellers to a supper and a tem- 
perate glass of hot Wassail ; that the voice of Fame 



146 CHARLES DICKENS. 

had been heard in that land, declaring my ability to 
make hot Wassail ; that if I were permitted to hold 
the feast, I should be found comformable to reason, 
sobriety, and good hours ; in a word, that I could be 
merry and wise myself, and had been even known at 
a pinch to keep others so, although I was decorated 
with no badge or medal, and was not a Brother, Ora- 
tor, Apostle, Saint, or Prophet of any denomination 
whatever. In the end I prevailed, to my great joy. 
It was settled that at nine o'clock that night a Tur- 
key and a piece of Koast Beef should smoke upon the 
board; and that I, faint and unworthy minister for 
once of Master Richard Watts, should preside at the 
Christmas supper, host of the Six Poor Travellers. 

I went back to my inn to give the necessary direc- 
tions for the Turkey and Roast Beef, and, during the 
remainder of the day, could settle to nothing for think- 
ing of the Poor Travellers. When the wind blew 
hard against the windows, — - it was a cold day, with 
dark gusts of sleet alternating with periods of wild 
brightness, as if the year were dying fitfully, — I pic- 
tured them advancing towards their resting-place along 
various cold roads, and felt delighted to think how 
little they foresaw the supper that awaited them. I 
painted their portraits in my mind, and indulged in 
little heightening touches. I made them footsore ; I 
made them weary ; I made them carry packs and bun- 
clles ; I made them stop by finger-posts and milestones, 
leaning on their bent sticks, and looking wistfully at 
what was written there ; I made them lose their way, 
and filled their five wits with apprehensions of lying 
out all night, and being frozen to death. I took up 
my hat, and went out, climbed to the top of the Old 
Castle, and looked over the windy hills that slope 



THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 147 

down to the Medway, almost believing that I could 
descry some of my Travellers in the distance. After 
it fell dark, and the Cathedral bell was heard in the 
invisible steeple — quite a bower of frosty rime when 
I had last seen it — striking five, six, seven, I became 
so full of my Travellers that I could eat no dinner, and 
felt constrained to watch them still in the red coals of 
my fire. Thay were all arrived by this time, I thought, 
had got their tickets, and were gone in. — There my 
pleasure was dashed by the reflection that probably 
some Travellers had come too late and were shut out. 

After the Cathedral bell had struck eight, I could 
smell a delicious savor of Turkey and Eoast Beef 
rising to the window of my adjoining bedroom, which 
looked down into the inn-yard just where the lights of 
the kitchen reddened a massive fragment of the Castle 
Wall. It was high time to make the Wassail now ; 
therefore I had up the materials (which, together with 
their proportions and combinations, I must decline to 
impart, as the only secret of my own I was ever known 
to keep), and made a glorious jorum. Not in a bowl ; 
for a bowl anywhere but on a shelf is a low supersti- 
tion, fraught with cooling and slopping; but in a 
brown earthenware pitcher, tenderly suffocated, when 
full, with a coarse cloth. It being now upon the 
stroke of nine, I set out for Watts's Charity, carrying 
my brown beauty in my arms. I would trust Ben, the 
waiter, with untold gold ; but there are strings in the 
human heart which must never be soimded by anotlier, 
and drinks that I make myseK are those strings in 
mine. 

The Travellers were all assembled, the cloth was 
laid, and Ben had brought a great billet of wood, and 
had laid it artfully on the top of the fire, so that a 



148 CHARLES DICKENS. 

touch or two of the poker after supper should make a 
roaring blaze. Having deposited my brown beauty 
in a red nook of the hearth, inside the fender, w^here 
she soon began to sing like an ethereal cricket, diffus- 
ing at the same time odors as of ripe vineyards, spice 
forests, and orange groves, — I say, having stationed 
my beauty in a place of security and improvement, 1 
introduced myself to my guests by shaking hands all 
round, and giving them a hearty welcome. 

I found the party to be thus composed. Firstly, 
myself. Secondly, a very decent man, indeed, with his 
right arm in a sling, who had a certain clean agreeable 
smell of wood about him, from which I judged him 
to have something to do with shipbuilding. Thirdly, 
a little sailor boy, a mere child, with a profusion of 
rich dark brown hair, and deep womanly-looking eyes. 
Fourthly, a shabby-genteel personage in a threadbare 
black suit, and apparently in very bad circumstances, 
with a dry, suspicious look ; the absent buttons on his 
waistcoat eked out with red tape ; and a bundle of ex- 
traordinarily tattered papers sticking out of an inner 
breast-pocket. Fifthly, a foreigner by birth, but an 
Englislmaan in speech, who carried his pipe in the 
band of his hat, and lost no time in telling me, in an 
easy, simple, engaging way, that he was a watchmaker 
from Geneva, and travelled all about the Continent, 
mostly on foot, working as a journeyman, and seeing 
new countries — possibly (I thought) also smuggling 
a watch or so, now and then. Sixthly, a little widow, 
who had been very pretty and was still very young, 
but whose beauty had been wrecked in some great mis- 
fortune, and whose manner was remarkably timid, 
scared, and solitary. Seventhly and lastly, a Traveller 
of a kind familiar to my boyhood, but now almost 



THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 149 

obsolete, — a Book Peddler, who had a quantity of 
Pamphlets and Numbers with him, and who presently 
boasted that he could repeat more verses in an even- 
ing than he could sell in a twelvemonth. 

All these I have mentioned in the order in which 
they sat at table. I presided, and the matronly pres- 
ence faced me. We were not long in taking our 
places, for the supper had arrived with me, in the 
following procession : — 

Myself with the pitcher. 

Ben with Beer. 

Inattentive Boy with hot plates. Inattentive Boy 

with hot plates. 

THE TURKEY. 

Female carrying sauces to be heated on the spot. 

THE BEEF. 

Man with Tray on his head, containing Vegetables 

and Sundries. 

Volunteer Hostler from Hotel, grinning, 

And rendering no assistance. 

As we passed along the High Street, comet-like, we 
left a long tail of fragrance behind us which caused 
the public to stop, sniffing in wonder. We had pre- 
viously left at the corner of the inn-yard a wall-eyed 
young man connected with the Fly department, and 
well accustomed to the sound of a railway whistle 
which Ben always carries in his pocket, whose instruc- 
tions were, so soon as he should hear the whistle 
blown, to dash into the kitchen, seize the hot phim- 
pudding and mince-pies, and speed with them to 
Watts's Charity, where they w^ould be received (he 
was further instructed) by the sauce-female, who would 
be provided with brandy in a blue state of combustion. 



150 CHARLES DICKENS. 

All these arrangements were executed in the most 
exact and punctual manner. I never saw a finer 
turkey, finer beef, or greater prodigality of sauce and 
gravy; and my Travellers did wonderful justice to 
everything set before them. It made my heart re- 
joice to observe how their wind and frost hardened 
faces softened in the clatter of plates and knives and 
forks, and mellowed in the fire and supper heat. 
While their hats and caps and wrappers, hanging 
up, a few small bundles on the ground in a corner, 
and in another corner three or four old walking- 
sticks, worn down at the end to mere fringe, linked 
this snug interior with the bleak outside in a golden 
chain. 

When supper was done, and my brown beauty had 
been elevated on the table, there was a general requi- 
sition to me to " take the corner ; " which suggested 
to me comfortably enough how much my friends here 
made of a fire, — for when had I ever thought so 
highly of the corner, since the days when I connected 
it with Jack Horner ? However, as I declined, Ben, 
whose touch on all convivial instruments is perfect, 
drew the table apart, and instructing my Travellers 
to open right and left on either side of me, and form 
round the fire, closed up the centre with myself and 
my chair, and preserved the order we had kept at 
table. He had already, in a tranquil manner, boxed 
the ears of the inattentive boys until they had been 
by imperceptible degrees boxed out of the room ; and 
he now rapidly skirmished the sauce-female into the 
High Street, disappeared, and softly closed the door. 

This was the time for bringing the poker to bear 
upon the billet of wood. I tapped it three times, 
like an enchanted talisman, and a brilliant host of 



THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 151 

merry-makers burst out of it, and sported off by the 
chimney, — rushing up the middle in a fiery country 
dance, and never coming down again. Meanwhile, 
by their sparkling light, which threw our lamp into 
the shade, I filled the glasses, and gave my Travellers, 
Christmas ! — Christmas Eve, my friends, when 
the shepherds, who were Poor Travellers, too, in 
their way, heard the Angels sing, " On earth, peace. 
Good- will towards men ! " 

I don't know who was the first among us to think 
that we ought to take hands as we sat, in deference 
to the toast, or whether any one of us anticipated the 
others, but at any rate we all did it. We then drank 
to the memory of the good Master Richard Watts. 
And I wish his Ghost may never have had worse 
usage under that roof than it had from us. 

It was the witching time for story-telling. " Our 
whole life. Travellers," said I, "is a story more or 
less intelligible, — generally less ; but w^e shall read 
it by a clearer light when it is ended. I, for one, am 
so divided this night between fact and fiction that I 
scarce know which is which. Shall I beguile the 
time by telling you a story as we sit here ? " ^ 



IL 

THE ROAD. 

My story being finished, and the Wassail, too, we 
broke up as the Cathedral bell struck Twelve. I did 
not take leave of my travellers that night ; for it had 

1 Here followed a group of stories, of wliich Dickens wrote 
one, and when tlie stories had all been told, he wound up the 
entertainment with the sketch entitled The Road. 



152 CHARLES DICKENS. 

come into my head to reappear, in conjunction with 
some hot coffee, at seven in the morning. 

As I passed along the High Street, I heard the 
Waits at a distance, and struck off to find them. 
They were playing near one of the old gates of the 
city, at the corner of a wonderfully quaint row of 
red brick tenements, which the clarionet obligingly 
informed me were inhabited by the Minor Canons. 
They had odd little porches over the doors, like 
sounding - boards over old pulpits ; and I thought I 
should like to see one of the Minor Canons come out 
upon his top step, and favor us with a little Christmas 
discourse about the poor scholars of Rochester ; tak- 
ing for his text the words of his Master, relative to 
the devouring of Widows' houses. 

The clarionet was so communicative, and my incli- 
nations were (as they generally are) of so vagabond 
a tendency, that I accompanied the Waits across an 
open green called the Vines, and assisted ^ in the 
French sense — at the performance of two waltzes, 
two polkas, and three Irish melodies, before I thought 
of my inn any more. However, I returned to it then, 
and found a fiddle in the kitchen, and Ben, the wall- 
eyed young man, and two chamber-maids circling 
round the great deal table with the utmost animation. 

I had a very bad night. It cannot have been owing 
to the turkey or the beef, — and the Wassail is out of 
the question, — but in every endeavor that I made 
to get to sleep I failed most dismally. I was never 
asleep ; and in whatsoever unreasonable direction my 
mind rambled, the effigy of Master Richard Watts 
perpetually embarrassed it. 

In a word, I only got out of the Worshipful Master 
Richard Watts's way by getting out of bed in the dark 



THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 153 

at six o'clock, and tumbling, as my custom is, into all 
tlie cold water that could be accumulated for the pur- 
pose. The outer air was dull and cold enough in the 
street, when I came down there ; and the one candle 
in our supper-room at Watts's Charity looked as pale 
in the burning as if it had had a bad night too. But 
my Travellers had all slept soundly, and they took 
to the hot coffee, and the piles of bread and butter, 
which Ben had arranged like deals in a timber-yard, 
as kindly as I could desire. 

While it was yet scarcely daylight, we all came out 
into the street together, and there shook hands. The 
widow took the little sailor towards Chatham, where 
he was to find a steamboat for Sheerness ; the lawyer, 
with an extremely knowing look, went his own way, 
without committing himself by announcing his inten- 
tions ; two more struck off by the Cathedral and old 
Castle for Maidstone ; and the book-peddler accom- 
panied me over the bridge. As for me, I was going 
to walk by Cobham Woods, as far upon my way to 
London as I fancied. 

When I came to the stile and footpath by which I 
was to diverge from the main road, I bade farewell to 
my last remaining Poor Traveller, and pursued my 
way alone. And now the mists began to rise in the 
most beautiful manner, and the sun to shine ; and as 
I went on through the bracing air, seeing the hoar 
frost sparkle everywhere, I felt as if all Nature shared 
in the joy of the great Birthday. 

Going through the woods, the softness of my tread 
upon the mossy ground and among the brown leaves 
enhanced the Christmas sacredness by which I felt 
surrounded. As the whitened stems environed me, I 
thought how the Founder of the time had never raised 



154 CHARLES DICKENS. 

his benignant hand, save to bless and heal, except in 
the case of one unconscious tree. By Cobham Hall, 
I came to the village, and the churchyard where the 
dead had been quietly buried, " in the sure and cer- 
tain hope " which Christmas time inspired. What 
children could I see at play, and not be loving of, 
recalling who had loved them ? No garden that I 
passed was out of unison with the day, for I remem- 
bered that the tomb was in a garden, and that " she, 
supposing him to be the gardener," had said, " Sir, if 
thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast 
laid him, and I will take him away." In time, the 
distant river with the ships came full in view, and 
with it pictures of the poor fishermen, mending their 
nets, who arose and followed him, — of the teaching 
of the people from a ship pushed off a little way from 
shore, by reason of the multitude, — of a majestic 
figure walking on the water, in the loneliness of 
night. My very shadow on the ground was eloquent 
of Christmas ; for did not the people lay their sick 
where the mere shadows of the men who had heard 
and seen him might fall as they passed along ? 

Thus Christmas begirt me far and near, until I had 
come to Blackheath, and had walked down the long 
vista of gnarled old trees in Greenwich Park, and was 
being steam-rattled through the mists now closing in 
once more, towards the lights of London. Brightly 
they shone, but not so brightly as my own fire, and 
the brighter faces around it, when we came together 
to celebrate the day. And there I told of worthy 
Master Eichard Watts, and of my supper with the 
Six Poor Travellers who were neither Rogues nor 
Proctors, and from that hour to this I have never 
seen one of them again. 




.^■:-'- 



/cy'^.r-^>->--9^ 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

The poetry of Wordsworth is so associated with what is 
known as the Lake Country of England that it is a pleasure 
to find him a native of that region, and not some city-bred 
man who sought the country as a refuge. He was born 
April 7, 1770, at Cockermouth, a town on the edge of the 
Cumberland highlands, and except for his college life, two 
journeys on the Continent, and occasional visits to London, 
he spent all his years in the neighborhood of his birthplace, 
so marking the country by his poems that another EngUsh 
poet happily named it Wordsworthshire. 

His father and mother both died when he was a boy. 
His memory of his boyhood was very vivid, for he often 
recurs to it in his poetry ; especially he was able to recall 
the impressions made on his mind by the mountains and 
lakes and the lonely scenes amid which he lived. When 
he was seventeen years old, he went to St. John's College, 
Cambridge, where he spent four years. They were the 
years when the early movements of the French Revolution 
set many ardent young Englishmen aflame with hopes of a 
new order of things, and he went to France after his gradu- 
ation ; but the deepening horror of the Reign of Terror sent 
him back to England at the end of a year. He drifted 
about for a while; he was a friend of Coleridge and of 
Southey, and with Coleridge published in 1798 a volume of 
poems with the title Lyrical Ballads. It contained poems, 
now famous, which were so unlike the poetry then familiar 



156 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

to readers that most people stared and laughed at them. 
So accustomed were they to think of poetry as a very 
formal thing, unusual ideas clothed in unusual language, 
that when a poet sang of the smiles and tears, the simple 
pleasures and the simple sorrows, of plain folk, even of chil- 
dren, and used in his song just such words as ordinary 
people used, they refused to believe they were listening to 
real poetry. This was not so of aU : a few heard the 
melody of the song, and as they listened, they were like 
the Poor Susan of Wordsworth's own ballad, the poetry 
took them to their home. The thoughts and feelings com- 
mon to men, the deep significance and beauty of the world 
which every one's eyes could look on, were brought to light, 
and Wordsworth showed himself thus a seer, another name 
for a poet, since he could see into life. 

After Lyrical Ballads was published, Wordsworth went 
to Germany for a while. Coleridge was his companion part 
of the time, but his nearest friend was his sister Dorothy, 
and when he went back to England he established himself 
near one of the lakes which he had known as a boy, and 
there lived with his sister. He had given up the hopes he 
had once entertained of a new order of society ; he became 
a firm supporter of the church and state, but he did not 
abandon his deeper, constant sense of a democracy which 
lay behind political and ecclesiastical forms. Above all, he 
believed in honest work. In one of his poems he used the 
phrase, often quoted since, — 

" Plain living and high thinking." 

That was the heart of Wordsworth's creed. 

He married Mary Hutchinson in 1802, but his sister 
Dorothy continued to make her home with him, and was 
a constant companion in his walks, his short journeys, and 
in his studies and thought. In 1813, after one or two 
changes of residence, he fixed his home at a spot called 
Rydal Mount,, near Ambleside, and there he lived till his 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 157 

death. His house, which has been visited by many lovers 
of Wordsworth's genius, stands on a knoll looking off upon 
Rydal Mere, a little sheet of water closed about by moun- 
tains. A small bit of ground only belongs to the place, but 
so skilfully did the poet dispose his hedges and trees that 
the eye wanders over large tracts, and is not interrupted by 
any apparent confine. He had distinguished neighbors, for 
Coleridge, Southey, and De Quincey lived in the same dis- 
trict, and later Harriet Martineau and Dr. Arnold made 
their homes there. He died at Rydal Mount, April 23, 1850. 

When one visits this region, he takes with him a volume 
of Wordsworth's poems, and it serves as a beautiful guide 
to the country. Not that the verses describe closely the 
several scenes, but they are the reflection of a poetic mind 
brought in contact with varied nature. Beethoven wrote 
over the score of his Pastoral Symphony, " Thoughts of a 
man going into the country in early spring." People when 
they hear the symphony sometimes think they hear the 
song of birds, or the wind in the treetojDs, or the ripple of 
a brook. This is not what Beethoven meant to convey : he 
wished to reproduce the soul of man as it listens to bird or 
wind or brook. Thus it was with Wordsworth. He sees 
a host of golden daffodils and the loneliness which pos- 
sessed him as he strayed through the field, and liis loneH- 
ness turns to gladness, even gayety, so that the image of the 
scene comes back to him when he is by himself in some 
still hour. He goes out despondent, and sees a poor, bent 
leech-gatherer patiently about his business ; the sight starts 
the memory of men about other sort of work, but equally 
separate from their fellows, and he goes back -svith a kind 
of victorious, triumphant feeling. Sometimes he sings as 
if his song were a very echo to the sounds he hears ; but 
nature or the activities of men do not merely rebound from 
him in a simple description ; they pass through his mind 
and partake of its character. 

The headnotes to the poems that follow are by Words- 
worth himself. 



WE ARE SEVEN. 

The little girl who is the heroine I met within the area of Go- 

derich Castle, in the year 1793. I composed it while walking in 

the grove at Alfoxden. My friends will not deem it too trifling 

to relate, that while walking to and fro I composed the last 

stanza first, having begun with the last line. When it was all 

but finished, I came in and recited it to Mr. Coleridge and my 

sister, and said, " A prefatory stanza must be added, and I should 

sit down to our little tea-meal with greater pleasure if my task 

was finished." I mentioned in substance what I wished to be 

expressed, and Coleridge immediately threw off the stanza 

thus: — 

" A little child, dear brother Jem." 

I objected to the rhyme, " dear brother Jem," as being ludicrous ; 
but we all enjoyed the joke of hitching in our friend James 
Tobiu's name. 

A SIMPLE Child, 

That lightly draws its breath, 
And feels its life in every limb. 
What should it know of death ? 

5 1 met a little cottage girl : 
She was eight years old, she said ; 
Her hair was thick with many a curl 
That clustered round her head. 

She had a rustic, woodland air, 
10 And she was wildly clad : 
Her eyes were fair, and very fair ; — 
Her beauty made me glad. 



WE ARE SEVEN. 159 

" Sisters and brothers, little Maid, 
How many may you be ? " 
15 " How many ? Seven in all," she said, 
And wondering looked at me. 

" And where are they ? I pray you tell." 
She answered, " Seven are we ; 
And two of us at Conway dwell, 
20 And two are gone to sea. 

" Two of us in the churchyard lie, 
My sister and my brother ; 
And, in the churchyard cottage, I 
Dwell near them with my mother." 

25 " You say that two at Conway dwell. 
And two are gone to sea, 
Yet ye are seven ! I pray you tell. 
Sweet Maid, how this may be." 

Then did the little Maid reply, 
30 " Seven boys and girls are we ; 
Two of us in the churchyard lie, 
Beneath the churchyard tree." 

" You run about, my little Maid, 
Your limbs they are alive ; 
35 If two are in the churchyard laid 
Then ye are only five." 

" Their graves are green, they may be seen," 
The little Maid replied, 

" Twelve steps or more from my mother's door, 
40 And they are side by side. 



160 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

" My stockings there I often knit, 
My kerchief there I hem ; 
And there upon the ground I sit 
And sing a song to them. 

45 " And often after sunset, Sir, 
When it is light and fair, 
I take my little porringer, 
And eat my supper there. 

" The first that died was sister Jane ; 
50 In bed she moaning lay, 
Till God released her of her pain ; 
And then she went away. 

" So in the churchyard she was laid ; 
And, when the grass was dry, 
55 Together round her grave we played, 
My brother John and I. 

" And when the ground was white with snow 
And I could run and slide. 
My brother John was forced to go, 
60 And he lies by her side." 

" How many are you, then," said I, 
" If they two are in heaven ? " 
Quick was the little Maid's reply, 
" O Master ! we are seven." 

65 " But they are dead ; those two are dead ! 
Their spirits are in heaven ! " 
'T was throwing words away ; for still 
The little Maid would have her will. 
And said, " Nay, we are seven ! " 



THE PET LAMB. 161 

THE PET LAMB. 

A PASTORAI,. 

Barbara Lewthwaite, now residing at Ambleside (1843) 
though much changed as to beauty, was one of two most lovely 
sisters, [but she] was not in fact the child whom I had seen and 
overheard as engaged in the poem. 

The dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink ; 
I beard a voice ; it said, " Drink, pretty creature, 

drink ! " 
And, looking o'er tbe hedge, before me I espied 
A snow-wbite mountain-lamb with a maiden at its 

side. 

5 Nor sheep nor kine were near ; the lamb was all 

alone, 
And by a slender cord was tethered to a stone ; 
With one knee on the grass did the little maiden 

kneel, 
While to that mountain-lamb she gave its evening 

meal. 

The lamb, while from her hand he thus his supper 

took, 
10 Seemed to feast with head and ears ; and his tail 

with pleasure shook. 
" Drink, pretty creature, drink ! " she said, in such 

a tone 
That I almost received her heart into my own. 

'T was little Barbara Lewthwaite, a child of beauty 

rare ! 
I watched them with delight, they were a lovely 

pair. 



162 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

15 Now with her empty can the maiden turned away, 
But ere ten yards were gone, her footsteps did she 
stay. 

Right towards the lamb she looked; and from a 

shady place 
I unobserved could see the workings of her face : 
If nature to her tongue could measured numbers 

bring, 
20 Thus, thought I, to her lamb that little maid might 

sing : — 

"What ails thee, young one ? what ? Why pull so 

at thy cord ? 
Is it not well with thee? well both for bed and 

board ? 
Thy plot of grass is soft, and green as grass can 

be; 
Rest, little young one, rest ; what is 't that aileth 

thee ? 

25 " What is it thou wouldst seek ? What is wanting 

to thy heart ? 
Thy limbs, are they not strong? And beautiful 

thou art : 
This grass is tender grass ; these flowers they have 

no peers ; 
And that green cord all day is rustling in thy ears ! 

" If the sun be shining hot, do but stretch thy wool- 
len chain, 
30 This beech is standing by, its covert thou canst 
gain; 



THE PET LAMB. 163 

For rain and mountain-storms ! the like tliou need'st 

not fear, 
The rain and storm are things that scarcely can 

come here. 

"Kest, little young one, rest; thou hast forgot the 

day 
When my father found thee first in places far 

away; 
35 Many flocks were on the hills, but thou wert owned 

by none, 
And thy mother from thy side for evermore was 

gone. 

" He took thee in his arms, and in pity brought 

thee home : 
A blessed day for thee ! then whither wouldst thou 

roam? 
A faithful nurse thou hast ; the dam that did thee 

yean 
40 Upon the mountain - tops no kinder could have 

been. 

"Thou know'st that twice a day I have brought 

thee in this can 
Fresh water from the brook, as clear as ever ran ; 
And twice in the day, when the ground is wet with 

dew, 
I bring thee draughts of milk, — warm milk it is 

and new. 

45 " Thy limbs will shortly be twice as stout as they 
are now. 
Then I '11 yoke thee to my cart like a pony in the 
plough ; 



164 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

My playmate thou slialt be ; and wlien the wind is 

cold, 
Our hearth shall be thy bed, our house shall be thy 

fold. 

" It will not, will not rest ! — Poor creature, can it be 
60 That 't is thy mother's heart which is working so in 

thee? 
Things that I know not of belike to thee are dear, 
And dreams of things which thou canst neither see 

nor hear. 

"Alas, the mountain-tops that look so green and 

fair ! 
I 've heard of fearful winds and darkness that come 

there ; 
55 The little brooks that seem all pastime and all play 
When they are angry roar like lions for their prey. 

" Here thou need'st not dread the raven in the sky ; 

Night and day thou art safe, — our cottage is hard by. 

Why bleat so after me ? Why pull so at thy chain ? 

60 Sleep, — and at break of day I will come to thee 

again ! " 

— As homeward through the lane I went with lazy 

feet, 
This song to myself did I oftentimes repeat ; 
And it seemed, as I retraced the ballad line by line. 
That but half of it was hers, and one half of it was 

mine. 

65 Again, and once again, did I repeat the song ; 
^' Nay," said I, " more than half to the damsel must 
belong, 



THE REVERIE OF POOR SUSAN. 165 

For slie looked with such a look, and she spake 

with such a tone, 
That I almost received her heart into my own." 



THE EEVERIE OF POOR SUSAN. 

This arose out of my observation of the affecting music of 
these birds, hanging in this way in the London streets, during 
the freshness and stillness of the spring morning. 

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight 

appears, 
Hangs a thrush that sings loud, it has sung for 

three years : 
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard 
In the silence of morning the song of the bird. 

5 'T is a note of enchantment ; what ails her ? She sees 
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees ; 
Bright volumes of vapor through Lothbury glide. 
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside. 

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, 
10 Down which she so often has tripped with her pail. 
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, 
The one only dwelling on earth that she loves. 

She looks, and her heart is in heaven : but they fade, 
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade : 
15 The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise. 
And the colors have all passed away from her eyes! 

7. Lothbury and Cheapside are streets in the heart of the city 
of London. 



166 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



TO A SKYLARK. 

Ethereal minstrel ! pilgrim of the sky ! 
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound? 
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye 
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground ? 
5 Thy nest, which thou canst drop into at will, 
Those quivering wings composed, that music still. 

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood ; 
A privacy of glorious light is thine ; 
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood 
10 Of harmony, with instinct more divine ; 
Type of the wise who soar, but never roam ; 
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home. 



TO THE CUCKOO. 

BLITHE New-comer ! I have heard, 

1 hear thee and rejoice. 

O Cuckoo ! shall I call thee Bird, 
Or but a wandering Voice ? 

5 While I am lying on the grass 
Thy twofold shout I hear. 
From hill to hill it seems to pass, 
At once far off, and near. 

Though babbling only to the vale, 
10 Of sunshine and of flowers. 
Thou bringest unto me a tale 
Of visionary hours. 



SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT. 167 

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring ! 
Even yet thou art to me 
15 No bird, but an invisible thing, 
A voice, a mystery ; 

The same whom in my schoolboy days 
I listened to ; that cry 
Which made me look a thousand ways, 
20 In bush, and tree, and sky. 

To seek thee did I often rove 
Through woods and on the green ; 
And thou wert still a hope, a love ; 
Still longed for, never seen. 

25 And I can listen to thee yet ; 
Can lie upon the plain 
And listen, till I do beget 
That golden time again. 

O blessed Bird ! the earth we pace 
30 Again appears to be 
An unsubstantial, faery place ; 
That is fit home for thee ! 



SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT. 

She was a phantom of delight 
When first she gleamed upon my sight ; 
A lovely apparition, sent 
To be a moment's ornament ; 
5 Her eyes as stars of twiHght fair ; 
Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair ; 



168 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

But all things else about her drawn 
From May-time and the cheerful dawn ; 
A dancing shape, an image gay, 
10 To haunt, to startle, and waylay. 

I saw her upon nearer view, 

A spirit, yet a woman too ! 

Her household motions light and free, 

And steps of virgin liberty ; 
15 A countenance in which did meet 

Sweet records, promises as sweet ; 

A creature not too bright or good 

For human nature's daily food ; 

For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 
20 Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. 

And now I see with eye serene 

The very pulse of the machine ; 

A being breathing thoughtful breath, 

A traveller between life and death ; 
25 The reason firm, the temperate will, 

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill ; 

A perfect woman, nobly planned. 

To warn, to comfort, and command ; 

And yet a spirit still, and bright 
30 With something of angelic light. 



THREE YEARS SHE GREW. 

Three years she grew in sun and shower : 
Then Nature said, " A lovelier flower 
On earth was never sown ; 
This child I to myself will take ; 



THREE YEARS SHE GREW. 169 

5 She shall be mine, and I will make 
A lady of my own. 

" Myself will to my darling be 
Both law and impulse : and with me 
The girl, in rock and plain, 
10 In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 
Shall feel an overseeing power 
To kindle or restrain. 

" She shall be sportive as the fawn 
That wild with glee across the lawn 
15 Or up the mountain springs ; 
And hers shall be the breathing balm, 
And hers the silence and the calm 
Of mute, insensate things. 

" The floating clouds their state shall lend 
20 To her ; for her the willow bend ; 
Nor shall she fail to see. 
Even in the motions of the storm, 
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 
By silent sympathy. 

25 " The stars of midnight shall be dear 
To her ; and she shall lean her ear 
In many a secret place 
Where rivulets dance their wayward round. 
And beauty born of murmuring sound 

30 Shall pass into her face. 

" And vital feelings of delight 
Shall rear her form to stately height. 



170 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

Her virgin bosom swell ; 
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give 
35 While she and I together live 
Here in this happy dell." 

Thus Nature spake. — The work was done. 
How soon my Lucy's race was run ! 
She died, and left to me 
40 This heath, this calm and quiet scene ; 
The memory of what has been, 
And never more will be. 



SHE DWELT AMONG THE UNTRODDEN WAYS. 

She dwelt among the untrodden ways 

Beside the springs of Dove, 
A maid whom there were none to praise, 

And very few to love : 

5 A violet by a mossy stone 
Half hidden from the eye ! 
Fair as a star, when only one 
Is shining in the sky. 

She lived unknown, and few could know 
10 When Lucy ceased to be ; 
But she is in her grave, and oh ! 
The difference to me ! 



THE DAFFODILS. 171 



THE DAFFODILS. 

The daffodils grew, and still grow, on the margin of Ullswa- 
ter, and probably may be seen to this day as beautiful, in the 
month of March, nodding their golden heads beside the dancing 
and foaming waves. 

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud 
That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 
When all at once I saw a crowd, 
A host, of golden daffodils ; 
5 Beside the lake, beneath the trees. 
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 

Continuous as the stars that shine 
And twinkle on the milky way, 
They stretched in never-ending line 
10 Along the margin of a bay : 
Ten thousand saw I at a glance. 
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 

The waves beside them danced ; but they 
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee : 
15 A poet could not but be gay. 
In such a jocund company : 
I gazed, — and gazed, — but little thought 
What wealth the show to me had brought : 

For oft, when on my couch I lie 
20 In vacant or in pensive mood. 
They flash upon that inward eye 
Which is the bliss of solitude ; 
And then my heart with pleasure fiUs, 
And dances with the daffodils. 



172 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 



TO THE DAISY. 

With little here to do or see 

Of things that in the great world be, 

Daisy ! again I talk to thee, 

For thou art worthy, 
5 Thou unassuming Commonplace 
Of Nature, with that homely face. 
And yet with something of a grace, 

Which Love makes for thee ! 

Oft on the dappled turf at ease 
10 1 sit, and play with similes, 
Loose types of things through all degrees, 

Thoughts of thy raising : 
And many a fond and idle name 
I give to thee, for praise or blame, 
15 As is the humor of the game, 
While I am gazing. 

A nun demure, of lowly port : 
Or sprightly maiden, of Love's court, 
In thy simplicity the sport 
20 Of all temptations ; 
A queen in crown of rubies drest ; 
A starveling in a scanty vest ; 
Are all, as seems to suit thee best. 
Thy appellations. 

25 A little Cyclops, with one eye 
Staring to threaten and defy, 
That thought comes next, — and instantly 
The freak is over. 



YARROW UN VISITED. 173 

The shape will vanish, — and behold 
30 A silver shield with boss of jrold. 
That spreads itself, some faery bold 
In fight to cover ! 

I see thee glittering from afar, — 

And then thou art a pretty star ; 
S5 Not quite so fair as many are 
In heaven above thee ! 

Yet like a star, with glittering crest. 

Self -poised in air thou seem'st to rest ; — 

May peace come never to his nest, 
40 Who shall reprove thee ! 

Bright Flower ! for by that name at last, 
When all my reveries are past, 
I call thee, and to that cleave fast, 

Sweet, silent creature ! 
45 That breath'st with me in sun and air, 
Do thou, as thou art wont, repair 
My heart with gladness, and a share 

Of thy meek nature ! 



YARROW UNVISITED. 

See the various Poems the scene of which is laid upon the 
banks of the Yarrow ; in particular, the exquisite Ballad of 
Hamilton beginning, — 

" Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny Bride, 
Busk ye, busk ye, my winsome Marrow ! " 

From Stirling Castle we had seen 
The mazy Forth unravelled ; 
Had trod the banks of Clyde and Tay, 
And with the Tweed had travelled ; 



174 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

5 And when we came to Clovenf ord, 
Then said my " winsome Marrow^'' 
" Whate'er betide, we '11 turn aside, 
And see the braes of Yarrow." 

" Let Yarrow folk, frae Selkirk town, 
10 Who have been buying, selling. 

Go back to Yarrow, 't is their own ; 

Each maiden to her dwelling ! 

On Yarrow's banks let herons feed, 

Hares couch, and rabbits burrow ! 
15 But we will downward with the Tweed, 

Nor turn aside to Yarrow. 

" There 's Galla Water, Leader Haughs, 
Both lying right before us ; 
And Dryborough, where with chiming Tweed 
20 The lintwhites sing in chorus ; 
There 's pleasant Tiviot-dale, a land 
Made blithe with plough and harrow : 
Why throw away a needful day 
To go in search of Yarrow ? 

25 " What 's Yarrow but a river bare. 

That glides the dark hills under ? 

There are a thousand such elsewhere. 

As worthy of your wonder." 

Strange words they seemed of slight and scorn ! 
30 My true-love sighed for sorrow ; 

And looked me in the face, to think 

I thus could speak of Yarrow ! 

9. Frae. Scottish iovfrom. 



YARROW UNVISITED. 175 

" Oh, green," said I, " are Yarrow's holms, 

And sweet is Yarrow flowinjr ! 
35 Fair hangs the apple f rae the rock, 

But we will leave it growing. 

O'er hilly path, and open Strath, 

We '11 wander Scotland thorough ; 

But, though so near, we will not turn 
40 Into the dale of Yarrow. 

" Let beeves and homebred kine partake 
The sweets of Burn-mill meadow ; 
The swan on still St. Mary's Lake 
Float double, swan and shadow ! 
45 We will not see them ; will not go 
To-day, nor yet to-morrow ; 
Enough, if in our hearts we know 
There 's such a place as Yarrow. 

" Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown I 
50 It must, or we shall rue it : 

We have a vision of our own ; 

Ah ! why should we undo it ? 

The treasured dreams of times long past. 

We '11 keep them, winsome Marrow ! 
55 For when we 're there, although 't is fair, 

'T will be another Yarrow ! 

" If care with freezing years should come. 
And wandering seem but folly, — 
Should we be loth to stir from home, 
60 And yet be melancholy, — 
Should life be dull, and spirits low, 
'T will soothe us in our sorrow, 
That earth has something yet to show. 
The bonny holms of Yarrow ! " 



176 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



STEPPING WESTWARD. 

While my Fellow-traveller and I were walking by the side of 
Loch Ketterine, one fine evening after sunset, in our road to a 
hut where, in the course of our tour, we had been hospitably 
entertained some weeks before, we met, in one of the loneliest 
parts of that solitary region, two well-dressed women, one of 
whom said to us, by way of greeting, " What, you are stepping 
westward ? " 

" What, you are stepping westward f " — " Tea." 
— 'T would be a wildish destiny, 
If we, who thus together roam 
In a strange land, and far from home, 
5 Were in this place the guests of chance : 
Yet who would stop, or fear to advance, 
Though home or shelter he had none. 
With such a sky to lead him on ? 

The dewy ground was dark and cold ; 
10 Behind, all gloomy to behold ; 

And stepping westward seemed to be 

A kind of heavenly destiny : 

I liked the greeting ; 't was a sound 

Of something without place or bound ; 
15 And seemed to give me spiritual right 

To travel through that region bright. 

The voice was soft, and she who spake 
Was walking by her native lake : 
The salutation had to me 
20 The very sound of courtesy : 
Its power was felt ; and while my eye 
Was fixed upon the glowing sky. 



TO SLEEP. 177 

The echo of the voice inwrought 
A human sweetness with the thouiiht 
25 Of travelling through the world that lay 
Before me in my endless way. 

SONNET, 

COMPOSED UPON WESTMIXSTEK BRIDGE. 

Eaeth has not anything to show more fair : 
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 
A sight so touching in its majesty : 
This City now doth, like a garment, wear 

5 The beauty of the morning ; silent, bare, 
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie 
Open unto the fields, and to the sky. 
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. 
Never did sun more beautifully steep, 

10 In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill ; 
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep ! 
The river glideth at his own sweet will : 
Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep ; 
And all that mighty heart is lying still ! 

TO SLEEP. 

A FLOCK of sheep that leisurely pass by. 
One after one ; the sound of rain, and bees 
Murmuring ; the fall of rivers, winds and seas, 
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and i)ure sky ; 
5 1 have thought of all by turns, and yet to lie 
Sleepless ! and soon the small bii-ds' melodies 
Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees ; 
And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry. 



178 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

Even thus last night, and two nights more, I lay, 
10 And could not win thee, Sleep ! by any stealth ; 
So do not let me wear to-night away : 
Without thee what is all the morning's wealth ? 
Come, blessed barrier between day and day, 
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health ! 

IT IS A BEAUTEOUS EVENING, CALM AND 

FREE. 

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, 
The holy time is quiet as a nun 
Breathless with adoration ; the broad sun 
Is sinking down in its tranquillity ; 
5 The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea. 
Listen ! the mighty Being is awake, 
And doth with his eternal motion make 
A sound like thunder — everlastingly. 
Dear child ! dear girl ! that walkest with me here, 
10 If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, 
Thy nature is not therefore less divine : 
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year ; 
And worshipp'st at the temple's inner shrine, 
God being with thee when we know it not. 

EXTEMPORE EFFUSION UPON THE DEATH 
OF JAMES HOGG. 

When first, descending from the moorlands, 

I saw the stream of Yarrow glide 

Along a bare and open valley. 

The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide. 

4. James Hogg was a shepherd in the Vale of Ettrick, who 
had a slight but genuine poetic gift. He was a friend of Walter 
Scott's. 



UPON THE DEATH OF JAMES HOGG. 179 

5 When last along its banks I wandered. 
Through groves that had begun to shed 
Their golden leaves upon the pathways, 
My steps the Border-minstrel led. 

The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer, 
10 'Mid mouldering ruins low he lies ; 
And death upon the braes of Yarrow 
Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes ; 

Nor has the rolling year twice measured, 
From sign to sign, its steadfast course, 
15 Since every mortal power of Coleridge 
Was frozen at its marvellous source ; 

The rapt one, of the godlike forehead. 
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth ; 
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, 
20 Has vanished from his lonely hearth. 

Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits, 
Or waves that own no curbing hand. 
How fast has brother followed brother, 
From sunshine to the sunless land ! 

25 Yet I, whose lids from infant slumber 
Were earlier raised, remain to hear 
A timid voice, that asks in whispers, 
" Who next will drop and disappear ? " 

Our haughty life is crowned with darkness, 
30 Like London with its own black wreath, 
On which, with thee, O Crabbe! forth-looking, 
I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath. 



180 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

As if but yesterday departed, 
Thou too art gone before ; but why, 
35 O'er ripe fruit, seasonably gathered, 
Should frail survivors heave a sigh ? 

Mourn rather for that holy Spirit, 
Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep ; 
For her who, ere her summer faded, 
40 Has sunk into a breathless sleep. 

No more of old romantic sorrows. 

For slaughtered youth or love-lorn maid ! 

With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten, 

And Ettrick mourns with her their Poet dead. 



RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE. 

There was a roaring in the wind all night ; 
The rain came heavily and fell in floods ; 
But now the sun is rising cahn and bright ; 
The birds are singing in the distant woods ; 
5 Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods ; 
The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters ; 
And all the air is fiUed with pleasant noise of 
waters. 

All things that love the sun are out of doors ; 
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth ; 
10 The grass is bright with rain-drops ; — on the moors 
The hare is running races in her mirth ; 
And with her feet she from the plashy earth 
Paises a mist ; that, glittering in the sun. 
Puns with her all the way, wherever she doth run. 
39. FeHcia Hemans. 



RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE. 181 

15 1 was a Traveller then upon the moor ; 

I saw the hare that raced about with joy ; 

I heard the woods and distant waters roar ; 

Or heard them not, as happy as a boy : 

The pleasant season did my heart employ : 
20 My old remembrances went from me wholly ; 

And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy. 

But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might 
Of joy in minds that can no further go. 
As high as we have mounted in delight 
25 In our dejection do we sink as low ; 
To me that morning did it happen so ; 
And fears and fancies thick upon me came ; 
Dim sadness, and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor 
could name. 

I heard the skylark warbling in the sky ; 
30 And I bethought me of the playful hare : 

Even such a happy child of earth am I ; 

Even as these blissful creatures do I fare ; 

Far from the world I walk, and all from care ; 

But there may come another day to me, — 
35 Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty. 

My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought. 
As if life's business were a summer mood ; 
As if all needful things would come unsought 
To genial faith, still rich in genial good ; 
40 But how can he expect that others should 
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call 
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at 
aU? 



182 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy, 
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride ; 
45 Of him who walked in glory and in joy, 
Following his plough, along the mountain-side : 
By our own spirits we are deified : 
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness ; 
But thereof come in the end despondency and 
madness. 

50 Now, whether it were by peculiar grace, 
A leading from above, a something given, 
Yet it befell, that, in this lonely place. 
When I with these untoward thoughts had striven, 
Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven, 

55 1 saw a man before me unawares ; 
The oldest man he seemed that ever wore gray hairs. 

As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie 
Couched on the bald top of an eminence, 
Wonder to all who do the same espy, 
60 By what means it could thither come, and whence : 
So that it seems a thing endued with sense ; — 
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf 
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself ; — 

Such seemed this man, not all alive nor dead, 
65 Nor all asleep, in his extreme old age : 
His body was bent double, feet and head 
Coming together in life's pilgrimage ; 
As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage 
Of sickness felt by him in times long past, 
70 A more than human weight upon his frame had 
cast. 

45. Robert Burns. 



RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE. 183 

Himself he propped, limbs, body, and pale face, 
Upon a long gray staff of sbaven wood : 
And, still as I drew near with gentle pace, 
Upon the margin of that moorish flood 
75 Motionless as a cloud the old man stood. 
That heareth not the loud winds when they call. 
And moveth all together, if it move at all. 

At length, himself unsettling, he the pond 
Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look 
80 Upon that muddy water, which he conned, 
As if he had been reading in a book : 
And now a stranger's privilege I took ; 
And, drawing to his side, to him did say, 
" Tliis morning gives us promise of a glorious day." 

85 A gentle answer did the old man make, 
In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew ; 
And him with further words I thus bespake : 
" What occupation do you there pursue ? 
This is a lonesome place for one like you." 

90 Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise 
Broke from the sable orbs of his yet vivid eyes. 

His words came feebly, from a feeble chest. 
But each in solemn order followed each, 
With something of a lofty utterance drest, — 
95 Choice word and measured phi-ase, above the reach 
Of ordinary men ; a stately speech ; 
Such as grave livers do in Scotland use, 
Religious men, who give to God and man their dues. 

He told, that to these waters he had come 
To gather leeches, being old and poor : 



100 



184 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

Employment hazardous and wearisome ! 
And lie had many hardships to endure : 
From pond to pond he roamed, from moor to moor ; 
Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance; 
105 And in this way he gained an honest maintenance. 

The old man still stood talking by my side ; 
But now his voice to me was like a stream 
Scarce heard ; nor word from word could I divide ; 
And the whole body of the man did seem 
no Like one whom I had met with in a dream ; 
Or like a man from some far region sent, 
To give me human strength, by apt admonishment. 

My former thoughts returned : the fear that kills 
And hope that is unwilling to be fed ; 
115 Cold, pain, and labor, and all fleshly ills ; 
And mighty poets in their misery dead. 
— Perplexed, and longing to be comforted, 
My question eagerly did I renew, 
" How is it that you live, and what is it you do ? " 

120 He with a smile did then his words repeat ; 
And said, that, gathering leeches, far and wide 
He travelled ; stirring thus about his feet 
The waters of the pools where they abide. 
" Once I could meet with them on every side ; 

125 But they have dwindled long by slow decay ; 
Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may." 

While he was talking thus, the lonely place, 

The old man's shape, and speech, — all troubled 

me : 
In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace 



RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE. 185 

130 About the weary moors continually, 
Wandering about alone and silently. 
While I these thoughts within myself pursued, 
He, having made a pause, the same discourse re- 
newed. 

And soon with this he other matter blended, 
135 Cheerfully uttered, with demeanor kind. 

But stately in the main ; and when he ended, 

I could have laughed myself to scorn, to find 

In that decrepit man so firm a mind. 

" God," said I, " be my help and stay secure ; 
140 1 '11 think of the Leech-gatherer on the lonely moor ! " 



ROBERT BURNS. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

" For my own affairs, I am in a fair way of becoming as 
eminent as Thomas a Kempis or John Bunyan ; and you 
may expect henceforth to see my birthday inserted among 
the wonderful events, in the Poor Robin's and Aberdeen 
Almanacks, along with the Black Monday and the Battle 
of Bothwell Bridge." So Burns wrote to a friend in the 
brief heyday of his prosperity at Edinburgh. When his 
last illness came upon him, and his life seemed a shipwreck, 
he told his wife : " Don't be afraid : I '11 be more respected 
a hundred years after I am dead than I am at present." 

Both of these prophecies, the jocose and the serious, have 
been completely verified, for the 25th of January, 1759, 
Robert Burns's birthday, is a date to be found in many a 
list of the world's memorable events ; and now that he has 
been dead a century, his fame lives secure with that of the 
great poets. 

His father, William Burns, at the time of the poet's 
birth was a gardener and farm-overseer at Alloway in 
Ayrshire in Scotland, and was always a poor man. Like 
many others of his class in Scotland, he prized highly every 
mental accomplishment, and gave his children, of whom the 
second son Gilbert was always the most closely identified 
with his elder brother Robert, every advantage within his 
limited reach. Through him an excellent teacher was 
brought to the village. An autobiographical letter from 
Burns to a friend acknowledges his early debt to this man 
for sound instructions, and, no less generously, to an igno- 




f\Oi)i^^ fifA/f}U 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 187 

rant old woman who plied him as a child with all the local 
fairy-stories and superstitions which filled her credulous 
brain. Thus, he says, were " the latent seeds of poetry " 
cultivated. They were further developed by the reading of 
such books of verse, Scottish and English, as the school- 
master put into the eager boy's hands. By the time he 
was twenty-two, he spoke of Poesy, as he might have done 
long before, " as a darling walk for my mind." 

Many things had befallen him, however, through his 
youth. At fifteen he had had his first experience of love- 
making, and to the end of his life he could truly say in the 
words of his own song : — 

*' The sweetest hours that e'er I spend 
Are spent amang the lasses, O ! " 

His bitterest hours, too, were often the direct result of these 
pleasures, for there was more of impulse than of wisdom in 
his constant dealings with '*the lasses." One writer has 
said of him : "In almost all the foul weather which Burns 
encountered, a woman may be discovered flitting through it 
like a stormy petrel." In the period of youth, also, he 
formed his habits of conviviality. Full of wit and glad to 
escape from a naturally melancholy self, it is no wonder 
that when, at seventeen, he went to study trigonometry and 
mensuration at a village on the Ayrshire coast much fre- 
quented by smugglers, their free ways appealed to him 
strongly. Many men before and since Burns have had to 
pay heavily for the very qualities which have made them 
attractive to others : the pity of it is that, as in the case 
of Burns, the tavern too often becomes the theatre of 
actions which finally subdue the real good in a man to the 
evil about him. 

Except for another absence from home, in a fruitless 
attempt to learn the trade of a flax-dresser, Buras lived 
with his own people, earning like his brother Gilbert £7 a 
year for his work on the farm, until the father died insol- 
vent in 1784, when Robert was twenty-five years old. 



188 ROBERT BURNS. 

Thereupon Gilbert and he contrived to enter upon a new 
farming venture at Mossgiel in the parish of Mauchline. 
Their enterprise met with very indifferent success, though 
Robert, with the resolve, "Come, go to, I will be wise," 
tried hard to lead a prudent life. Yet the second and third 
years at Mossgiel were marked by the production of some 
of his most memorable poems. In 1786 Burns's affairs 
were so complicated by his relations with a girl of the 
neighborhood, Jean Armour, that he determined to go as 
a book-keeper to Jamaica, and begin a new life. In the 
same year the more beautiful love-passages with Mary 
Campbell, or "Higliland Mary," occurred. To raise the 
money for his passage to America Burns published his 
poems, and soon received £20 for their sale. Their rare 
merit was quickly recognized, and just as the poet was 
about to embark on a ship from the Clyde, he received an 
urgent appeal to try his fortunes in Edinburgh with a sec- 
ond edition of the poems. This jumped with his inmost 
wishes, and his departure was abandoned. 

In Edinburgh he soon found himself the lion of the hour. 
In the dedication of his poems to the Gentlemen of the Cale- 
donian Hunt he told the true secret of his glory then and 
since in saying : " The poetic genius of my country . . . 
bade me sing the loves, the joys, the rural scenes and rural 
pleasures of my native soil, in my native tongue. I tuned 
my wild, artless notes, as she inspired." No poet was ever 
more thoroughly of his own country than Burns. The very 
fact of his lowly origin and opportunities made him then, 
as it makes him still, the more conspicuous as a poet born 
and not made to sing. The second edition was an imme- 
diate success, and the Ayrshire ploughman was feted by all 
the wise and great, as they were thought, of the Scottish 
capital. He felt, however, that this new life was not for 
him, and, having tasted of it, took a lease in the spring of 
1788 of the farm of EUisland on the banks of the Nith. 
Moreover he made such amends to Jean Armour as he 
could by taking her as his wife to share his new home. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 189 

Farming was again a failure, and but for Burns's ap- 
pointment as an exciseman with a salary of £50 a year, the 
very necessities of life would have been most meagrely sup- 
plied. As it was, the farm had to be abandoned in 1791, 
and the family, steadily growing, took lodgings in the town 
of Dumfries. As from Ellisland Burns had sent song after 
song to Edinburgh for the Scots Musical Museum, so 
from Dumfries he kept Mr. George Thomson constantly 
supplied with beautiful lyrics for his collection of national 
songs and melodies. 

In Dumfries matters did not mend. A growing feeluig 
of resentment against the world made the poet more defiant 
of society than ever. He quarrelled with some of his best 
friends, and was generally at odds with his surroundings. 
The end was not far off, for in 1796, after sleeping one 
night for several hours in the snow, an illness beset him to 
which he soon succumbed. His last days were clouded by 
debts and the threat of prison, yet his friends and faithful 
wife did all in their power to bring him comfort. On the 
21st of July, he died. 

The voice of censure is not to be raised too bitterly 
against such as Burns. It has been written of him : " It is 
difficult to carry a fuU. cup and not to spill it." Instead of 
mourning the results of human passions that lacked an ade- 
quate guiding hand, let us be thankful that with them was 
joined Burns's abundant gift of poetry. Because he was 
so human, so full of true feeling, common sense, humor, 
and susceptibility of every sort, his songs are exactly what 
they are. The handsome, impulsive fellow, endowed with 
many a rarer faculty than that " prudent, cautious self-con- 
trol" which he himself honored as "wisdom's root," put 
himself without reservation into everything he wrote ; and 
if his life was not a worldly success, perhaps it is something 
more to live on as the chief glory of a national literature, 
and as a singer of songs which stand second to none in their 
true human music and direct inspiration. 



THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT. 

INSCRIBED TO KOBERT AIKEJST, ESQ. 

" Let not ambition mock their useful toil, 
Their homely joys and destiny obscure ; 
Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile. 
The short and simple annals of the poor." 

Geay. 

The Cotter's Saturday Night was written in 1785, while Burns 
and his brother Gilbert were living and working on the farm at 
Mossgiel. In writing of the Cotter's household devotions, Burns 
was on familiar ground, for before his father's death he used to 
take his part by reading " the chapter " and giving out the psalm. 
Afterwards, as the eldest son, he conducted the prayers himself, 
with an impressiveness long remembered. Gilbert Burns has 
left the record : " He had frequently remarked to me that he 
thought there was something peculiarly venerable in the phrase, 
' Let us worship God,' used by a sober head of a family intro- 
ducing family- worship. To this sentiment of the author the 
world is indebted for The Cotter's Saturday Night. The hint 
of the plan and title of the poem were taken from Fergusson's 
Farmer's Ingle. When Robert had not some pleasure in view 
in which I was not thought fit to participate, we used frequently 
to walk together, when the weather was favorable, on the Sun- 
day afternoons (those precious breathing times to the laboring 
part of the community), and enjoyed such Sundays as would 
make one regret to see their number abridged. It was in one 
of these walks that I first had the pleasure of hearing the author 
repeat The Cotter's Saturday Night. I do not recollect to have 
heard anything by which I was more highly electrified. The 
fifth and sixth stanzas, and the eighteenth, thrilled with a pe- 
culiar ecstasy through my soul." 



THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT. 191 

My loved, my honored, much-respected friend ! 

No mercenary bard his homage pays ; 
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end ; 
My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise. 
5 To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays, 

The lowly train in life's sequestered scene ; 

The native feelings strong, the guileless ways ; 
What Aiken in a cottage would have been : 
Ah ! though his worth unknow^n, far happier there, 
I ween ! 

10 November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh ; 
The short'ning winter-day is near a close ; 
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh. 

The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose : 
The toil-worn cotter frae his labor goes, — 
15 This night his weekly moil is at an end, — 

Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, 
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, 
And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hame- 
ward bend. 

At length his lonely cot appears in view, 
20 Beneath the shelter of an aged tree ; 

Th' expectant wee things, toddlin', stacher through 
To meet their dad, wi' flichterin' noise and 

glee. 
His wee bit ingle, blinking bonnily, 

10. hlaws, blows ; sugh, a rushing sound. 

12. /rae, from ; pleugh, plough. 

13. craws, crows. 

18. hameward, homeward. 

21. stacher, stagger. 

22. Jiichterin\ fluttering. 

23. bonnily, beautifully. 



192 ROBERT BURNS. 

His clean hearthstane, his thriftie wifie's smile, 
25 The lisping infant prattling on his knee, 

Does a' his weary carking cares beguile, 
And makes him quite forget his labor and his toil. 

Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in. 
At service out, amang the farmers roun' : 
30 Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin 
A cannie errand to a neebor town ; 
Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman grown. 
In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e. 
Comes hame, perhaps to shew a braw new 
gown, 
35 Or deposit her sair-won penny-fee. 
To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be. 

With joy unfeigned, brothers and sisters meet. 
And each for other's weelfare kindly spiers : 
The social hours, swift-winged, unnoticed fleet ; 
40 Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears ; 

The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years ; 
Anticipation forward points the view. 

The mother, wi' her needle and her shears. 
Gars auld claes look amaist as weel 's the new — 
45 The father mixes a' wi' admonition due. 

26. a\ all. 

28. belyve, by and by ; hairns, children ; drapping, dropping. 

29. amang, among. 

30. ca', drive ; tentie, heedful ; rin, run. 

31. cannie, easy ; neehor, neighbor. 

33. e'e, eye. 

34. hraw, handsome. 

35. sair, sore, hard ; penny-fee, wages. 
38. weelfare, welfare ; spiers, inquires. 
40. uncos, strange things, news. 

44, gars auld claes, makes old clothes ; amaist, almost. 



THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT. 193 

Their master's and their mistress's command, 

The younkers a' are warned to obey ; 
And mind their labors wi' an eydent hand, 

And ne'er, though out o' sight, to jauk or play : 
50 " And oh ! be sure to fear the Lord alway ! 

And mind your duty, duly, morn and night ! 
Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray, 
Implore His counsel and assisting might : 
They never sought in vain that sought the Lord 
aright ! " 

55 But, hark ! a rap comes gently to the door ; 
Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same, 
Tells how a neebor lad cam o'er the moor. 
To do some errands, and convoy her hame. 
The wily mother sees the conscious flame 
60 Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek ; 

Wi' heart-struck anxious care inquires his 
name. 
While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak ; 
Weel pleased the mother hears it 's nae wild, worth- 
less rake. 

Wi' kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben ; 
ft5 A strappin' youth ; he taks the mother's eye ; 

47. younkers, youngsters. 

48. eydent, diligent. 

49. jauk, dally or trifle. 
62. gang, go. 

66. wJia kens, who knows. 

67. cam, came. 

62. hafflins, partly. 

63. nae, no. 

64. hen, in. 
66. taks, takes. 



194 ROBERT BURNS. 

Blithe Jenny sees the visit 's no ill-ta'en ; 

The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye. 
The youngster's artless heart o'erilows wi' joy, 
But blate and laithfu', scarce can weel behave ; 
70 The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy 

What makes the youth sae bashf u' and sae grave ; 
Weel pleased to think her bairn 's respected like the 
lave. 

Oh, happy love ! where love like this is found ! 
Oh, heartfelt raptures ! bliss beyond compare ! 
75 I 've paced much this weary, mortal round. 

And sage experience bids me this declare : — 
If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare. 
One cordial in this melancholy vale, 

'T is when a youthful, loving, modest pair 
80 In other's arms breathe out the tender tale. 
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening 
gale. 

Is there, in human form, that bears a heart, 
A wretch, a villain, lost to love and truth. 
That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art, 
85 Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth ? 

Curse on his perjur'd arts ! dissembling 
smooth ! 
Are honor, virtue, conscience, all exiled ? 
Is there no pity, no relenting ruth, 

67. cracks, talks ; kye, cows. 

69. blate, shamefaced ; laithfu^ bashful. 

71. sae, so. 

72. lave, rest. 

80, 81. Compare with the lines from Milton's V Allegro : — 

" And every shepherd tells his tale 
Under the hawthorn in the dale." 



THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT, 195 

Points to the parents fondling o'er their child ? 
90 Then paints the ruined maid, and their distraction 
wild! 

But now the supper crowns their simple board, — 

The healsome parr itch, chief o' Scotia's food ; 
The soupe their only hawkie does afford, 

That 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood : 
95 The dame brings forth, in complimental mood, 

To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd kebbuck, fell, 

And aft he 's prest, and aft he ca's it guid ; 
The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell. 
How 't was a towmont auld, sin' lint was i' the bell. 

100 The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face. 

They, round the ingle, form a circle wide ; 
The sire turns o'er, with patriarchal grace, 
The big ha' Bible, ance his father's pride ; 
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, 
105 His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare ; 

Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, 
He wales a portion with judicious care. 
And " Let us worship God ! " he says, with sol- 
emn air. 

92. healsome, wholesome ; parritcTi, porridge. 

93. smpe, limited supply ; hawkie, cow. 

94. 'yont, beyond ; hallan, partition wall ; chows, chews : 
cood, cud. 

96. well-hain^d Tcebhuck, carefully saved cheese ; fell, biting. 

97. aft, often ; guid, good. 

99. towmont, twelvemonth ; sm' lint was V the bell, since flax 
was in the flower. 

103. ha\ hall ; ance, once. 
105. lyart haffets, gray temples. 
107. wales, chooses. 



196 ROBERT BURNS. 

They chant their artless notes in simple guise ; 
no They tune their hearts, by far the noblest 

aim; 
Perhaps Dundee^ s wild-warbling measures rise, 
Or plaintive Martyrs^ worthy of the name. 
Or noble Elgin beets the heavenward flame, 
The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays : 
115 Compared with these, Italian trills are tame ; 

The tickled ears no heartfelt raptures raise ; 
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise- 

The priest-like father reads the sacred page — 
How Abram was the friend of God on high ; 
120 Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage 

With Amalek's ungracious progeny ; 
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie 
Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire ; 
Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry ; 
125 Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire ; 

Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre. 

Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme — 
How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed : 

How He, who bore in heaven the second name, 
130 Had not on earth whereon to lay His head ; 

How His first followers and servants sped ; 

The precepts sage they wrote to many a land : 
How he, who lone in Patmos banished, 

111-113. Dundee, Martyrs, and Elgin are the names of old 
hymn-tunes found in many books. The adjectives applied to 
each are peculiarly fitting. 

113. heets, feeds, adds fuel to. 

117. hae, have. 

133. Saint John. 



THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT. 197 

Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand, 
135 And heard great Bab'lon's doom pronounced by 
Heaven's command. 

Then kneeling down, to Heaven's Eternal 
. King, 

The saint, the father, and the husband prays : 
Hope " springs exulting on triumphant wing," 
That thus they all shall meet in future days : 
140 There ever bask in uncreated rays. 

No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear, 

Together hymning their Creator's praise. 
In such society, yet still more dear ; 
While circling Time moves round in an eternal 
sphere. 

145 Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride, 
In all the pomp of method and of art. 
When men display to congregations wide 
Devotion's every grace, except the heart ! 
The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert, 
150 The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole ; 
But haply, in some cottage far apart. 
May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul ; 
And in His book of life the inmates poor enrol. 

Then homeward aU take off their several way ; 
155 The youngling cottagers retire to rest : 

The parent-pair their secret homage pay. 

And proffer up to Heaven the warm request, 
That He who stills the raven's clamorous nest. 
And decks the lily fair in flowery pride, 
160 Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best, 

138. Quoted from Pope's Windsor Forest. 



198 ROBERT BURNS. 

For them and for their little ones provide ; 
But chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine pre- 
side. 

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur 
springs, 
That makes her loved at home, revered abroad : 
165 Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 

" An honest man 's the noblest work of God ; " 
And certes, in fair Virtue's heavenly road. 
The cottage leaves the palace far behind : 

What is a lordling's pomp ? — a cumbrous 
load, 
170 Disguising oft the wretch of human kind. 
Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refined! 

O Scotia ! my dear, my native soil ! 

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent. 
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil 
175 Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet con- 

tent ! 
And oh ! may Heaven their simple lives prevent 
From luxury's contagion, weak and vile ! 

Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent, 
A virtuous populace may rise the while, 
180 And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved 
isle. 

O Thou ! who poured the patriotic tide. 

That streamed through Wallace's undaunted 
heart, 

166. Quoted from Pope's Essay on Man. 
182. William Wallace, the peer of Robert Bruce among Scot- 
tish heroes. 



TO A MOUSE. 199 

Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride, 
Or nobly die, the second glorious part, 
185 (The patriot's God, peculiarly Thou art. 

His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward ! ) 

Oh never, never, Scotia's realm desert ; 
But still the patriot, and the patriot bard. 
In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard ! 



TO A MOUSE, 

ON TURNING UP HER NEST WITH THE PLOUGH, NOVEM- 
BER, 1785. 

The lines To a Mouse seem by report to have been composed 
while Burns was actually ploughing. One of the poet's first 
editors wrote : " John Blane, who had acted as gaudsman to 
Burns, and who lived sixty years afterwards, had a distinct rec- 
ollection of the turning up of the mouse. Like a thoughtless 
youth as he was, he ran after the creature to kill it, but was 
checked and recalled by his master, who he observed became 
thereafter thoughtful and abstracted. Burns, who treated his 
servants with the familiarity of fellow-laborers, soon after- 
wards read the poem to Blane." 

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie, 
Oh, what a panic 's in thy breastie ! 
Thou needna start awa' sae hasty, 

Wi' bickering brattle ! 
5 1 wad be laith to rin and chase thee, 

Wi' murd'ring pattle ! 

Headnote, line 3, gaudsman^ ploughboy. 
1. sleekit, sleek. 

3. needna, need not. 

4. bickering brattle, clattering scamper. 

5. 6. The boy's attempt to kill the mouse may well have been 
in the poet's mind here. 

5. wad, would ; laith, loath. 

6. pattle, plough-staff. 



200 ROBERT BURNS. 

I 'm truly sorry man's dominion 
Has broken Nature's social union, 
And justifies that ill opinion, 
10 WMch makes thee startle 

At me, thy poor earthborn companion, 
And fellow-mortal I 

I doubtna, whiles, but thou may thieve ; 
What then ? poor beastie, thou maun live ! 
15 A daimen icker in a thrave 

'S a sma' request : 
I '11 get a blessin' wi' the lave. 

And never miss 't ! 

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin ! 
20 Its silly wa's the win's are strewin' ! 
And naething now to big a new ane 

O' foggage green, 
And bleak December's winds ensuin', 
Baith snell and keen ! 

25 Thou saw the fields laid bare and waste. 
And weary winter comin' fast, 
And cozie here, beneath the blast, 

Thou thought to dwell. 
Till, crash ! the cruel coulter passed 

30 Out through thy cell. 

13. whiles, sometimes. 

14. maun, must. 

15. daimen icker, ear of corn now and then ; thrave, twenty- 
four sheaves. 

21. hig, build ; ane, one. 

22. foggage, stray vegetable material used for nests. 
24. baith, both ; snell, biting. 



TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY. 201 

That wee bit heap o' leaves and stibble 
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble ! 
Now thou 's turned out for a' thy trouble, 

But house or hald, 
35 To thole the winter's sleety dribble, 

And cranreuch cauld ! 

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane, 
In proving foresight may be vain : 
The best-laid schemes o' mice and men 
40 Gang aft a-gley, 

And lea'e us nought but grief and pain. 
For promised joy. 

Still thou art blest, compared wi' me ! 
The present only toucheth thee : 
45 But, och ! I backward cast my e'e 

On prospects drear ! 
And forward, though I canna see, 

I guess and fear. 



TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY, 

ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH IN APRIL, 1786. 

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower. 
Thou 's met me in an evil hour ; 

31. stibble^ stubble. 

32. monie, many. 

34. hut, without ; hald, abiding-place. 

35. thole, endure. 

36. cranreuch cauld, cold hoar-frost. 

37. no thy lane, not alone. 
40. a-gley, wrong. 



202 ROBERT BURNS. 

For I maun crush amang the stoure 
Thy slender stem : 
5 To spare thee now is past my power, 
Thou bonny gem. 

Alas ! it 's no thy neebor sweet, 
The bonny lark, companion meet, 
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, 
10 Wi' speckled breast. 

When upward-springing, blithe, to greet 
The purpling east ! 

Cauld blew the bitter biting north 
Upon thy early, humble birth ; 
15 Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth 

Amid the storm, 
Scarce reared above the parent earth 

Thy tender form. 

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, 
20 High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield, 
But thou, beneath the random bield 

O' clod or stane. 
Adorns the histie stibble-field. 

Unseen, alane. 

25 There, in thy scanty mantle clad. 
Thy snawie bosom sunward spread, 

3. stoure, dust. 

6. honny, beautiful. 

9. weet, wet. 

21. bield, shelter. 

23. histie, dry, barren. 

26. snawie, snowj. 



TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY. 203 

Thou lifts thy unassuming head 

In humble guise ; 
But now the share uptears thy bed, 
30 And low thou lies ! 

Such is the fate of artless maid, 
Sweet floweret of the rural shade I 
By love's simplicity betrayed, 
And guileless trust, 
35 Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid 
Low i' the dust. 

Such is the fate of simple bard, 
On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd ! 
Unskilful he to note the card 
40 Of prudent lore. 

Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, 
And whelm him o'er ! 

Such fate to suffering worth is given. 
Who long with wants and woes has striven, 
45 By human pride or cunning driven 

To misery's brink. 
Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven, 

He, ruined, sink ! 

Even thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, 
50 That fate is thine — no distant date ; 
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate, 

Full on thy bloom. 
Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight 
Shall be thy doom. 
39. cardf the face of the compass. 



204 ROBERT BURNS. 



A BARD'S EPITAPH. 

A Bard^s Epitaph, written in 1786, is so sincere a confession 
of Burns's own faults that it seems an impertinence to rebuke 
them further. 

Is there a whim-inspired fool^. 

Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule, 

Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool, 

Let him draw near ; 
5 And owre this grassy heap sing dool, 

And drap a tear. 

Is there a bard of rustic song, 
Who, noteless, steals the crowds among, 
That weekly this area throng, 
10 Oh, pass not by ! 

But, with a frater-f eeling strong. 
Here heave a sigh. 

Is there a man whose judgment clear 
Can others teach the course to steer, 
15 Yet runs himself life's mad career. 

Wild as the wave ; 
Here pause — and, through the starting tear. 

Survey this grave. 

The poor inhabitant below 
20 Was quick to learn, and wise to know, 
And keenly felt the friendly glow. 
And softer flame ; 

2. owre, over. 

3. snool, submit tamely. 

5. dool, sorrow. 

6. drap, drop. 



FOR A' THAT AND A' THAT. 205 

But thoughtless follies laid him low, 
And stained his name ! 

25 Eeader, attend — whether thy soul 
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole, 
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole. 

In low pursuit ; 
Know, prudent, cautious self-control 

30 Is wisdom's root. 



SONGS. 
FOR A' THAT AND A' THAT. 

Is there, for honest poverty. 

That hangs his head, and a' that ! 
The coward slave, we pass him by, 
We dare be poor for a' that ! 
5 For a' that, and a' that. 

Our toils obscure, and a' that ; 
The rank is but the guinea's stamp, 
The man 's the gowd for a' that ! 

What though on hamely fare we dine, 
10 Wear hodden-gray, and a' that ; 
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, 
A man 's a man for a' that ! 
For a' that, and a' that. 

Their tinsel show, and a' that ; 
15 The honest man, though e'er sae poor. 

Is king o' men for a' that ! 

8. gowd, gold. 
11. gie^ give. 



206 ROBERT BURNS. 

Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, 

Wlia struts, and stares, and a' that ; 
Thougli hundreds worship at his word, 
20 He 's but a coof for a' that. 
For a' that, and a' that, 

His ribbon, star, and a' that ; 
The man of independent mind. 
He looks and laughs at a' that. 

25 A prince can mak a belted knight, 
A marquis, duke, and a' that ; 
But an honest man 's aboon his might, 
Guid faith, he maunna fa' that ! 
For a' that, and a' that, 
30 Their dignities, and a' that ; 

The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth. 
Are higher rank than a' that. 

Then let us pray that come it may — 
As come it will for a' that — 
35 That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, 
May bear the gree, and a' that. 
For a' that, and a' that. 

It 's coming yet, for a' that, 
That man to man, the warld o'er, 
40 Shall brothers be for a' that ! 

17. birkie, fellow. 
20. coof, fool. 
25. mak, make. 

27. ahoon, above. 

28. he maunna fa^ that, he must not think an honest man is 
not " aboon his might." 

36. gree, prize. 
39. warld, world. 



AULD LANG SYNE. 207 



AULD LANG SYNE. 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, 
And never brought to min' ? 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, 
And days o' lang syne ? 

CHOKUS. 

5 For auld lang syne, my dear, 

For auld lang syne. 
We '11 tak a cup o' kindness yet 
For auld lang syne. 

We twa hae run about tke braes, 
10 And pu'd the gowans fine ; 
But we 've wandered monie a weary foot. 
Sin' auld lang syne. 

We twa hae paidl't i' the burn, 
Frae morning sun till dine ; 
15 But seas between us braid hae roared. 
Sin' auld lang syne. 

And here 's a hand, my trusty fiere. 

And gie 's a hand o' thine ; 
And we '11 tak a right guid wiHie-waught, 
20 For auld lang syne. 

9. twa^ two ; hraes, hillsides. 

10. gowans, daisies. 

13. paidl't, paddled ; burn, stream. 

14. dine, dinner-time. 

15. braid, broad. 
17. Jiere, friend. 

19. ivillie-waugJiU hearty draught. 



208 ROBERT BURNS. 

And surely you '11 be your pint-stoup, 
And surely I '11 be mine ; 

And we '11 tak a cup o' kindness yet 
For auld lang syne. 



MY FATHER WAS A FARMER. 

Tune — The Weaver and his Shuttle, 0. 

My father was a farmer upon the Carrick border, O, 
And carefully he bred me in decency and order, O ; 
He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne'er 

a farthing, O, 
For without an honest manly heart no man was 

worth regarding, O. 

5 Then out into the world my course I did deter- 
mine, O ; 

Though to be rich was not my wish, yet to be great 
was charming, O : 

My talents they were not the worst, nor yet my 
education, O ; 

Resolved was I, at least to try, to mend my situa- 
tion, O. 

In many a way, and vain essay, I courted fortune's 
favor, O ; 
10 Some cause unseen still stept between, to frustrate 
each endeavor, O. 
Sometimes by foes I was o'erpowered, sometimes by 

friends forsaken, O ; 
And when my hope was at the top, I still was worst 
mistaken, O. 

21. stoup, flagon. 



MY FATHER WAS A FARMER. 209 

Then sore harassed, and tired at last, with fortune's 

vain delusion, O, 
I dropt my schemes, like idle dreams, and came to 

this conclusion, O : — 
15 The past was bad, and the future hid — its good 

or ill untried, O ; 
But the present hour was in my power, and so I 

would enjoy it, O. 

No help, nor hope, nor view had I, nor person to 

befriend me, O ; 
So I must toil, and sweat, and broil, and labor to 

sustain me, O ; 
To plough and sow, to reap and mow, my father 

bred me early, O ; 
20 For one, he said, to labor bred, was a match for 

fortune fairly, O. 

Thus all obscure, unknown, and poor, through life 
I 'm doomed to wander, O, 

TiU down my weary bones I lay, in everlasting 
slumber, O. 

No view nor care, but shun whate'er might breed 
me pain or sorrow, O ; 

I live to-day as well 's I may, regardless of to-mor- 
row, O. 

25 But cheerful still, I am as well as a monarch in a 

palace, O, 
Though fortune's frown still hunts me down with 

all her wonted malice, O : 
I make indeed my daily bread, but ne'er can make 

it farther, O ; 
But as daily bread is aU I need, I do not much 

regard her, 0. 



210 ROBERT BURNS. 

When sometimes by my labor I earn a little 
money, O, 
30 Some unforeseen misfortune comes generally upon 
me, O: 

Mischance, mistake, or by neglect, or my good-na- 
tured folly, O : 

But come what will, I 've sworn it still, I '11 ne'er 
be melancholy, O. 

All you who follow wealth and power with unremit- 
ting ardor, O, 

The more in this you look for bliss, you leave your 
view the farther, O : 
35 Had you the wealth Potosi boasts, or nations to adore 
you, O, 

A cheerful honest-hearted clown I will prefer be- 
fore you, O. 



JOHN ANDERSON. 

Tune — John Anderson my Jo. 

John Anderson my jo, John, 

When we were first acquent. 
Your locks were like the raven. 

Your bonny brow was brent ; 
5 But now your brow is held, John, 

Your locks are like the snaw ; 
But blessings on your frosty pow, 

John Anderson my jo. 

35. Potosi, a famous mining town of South America. 

1. joj sweetheart. 

2. acquent, acquainted. 

4. hrent, smooth. 

5. held, bald. 
7. pow, head. 



FLOW GENTLY, SWEET AFTON. 211 

Jolin Anderson my jo, John, 
10 We clamb the hill thegither, 
And monie a canty day, John, 
We 've had wi' ane anither : 
Now we maun totter down, John, 
But hand in hand we 'U go, 
15 And sleep thegither at the foot, 
John Anderson my jo. 



FLOW GENTLY^ SWEET AFTON. 

Flow Gently i Sweet Afton, is one of the songs, like the two that 
follow, composed in honor of Mary Campbell. After promis- 
ing to marry Burns, she went from Ayrshire to her parents in 
Argyleshire, in May, 1786, to make ready for the marriage ; but 
five months later, before it could take place, she died. Their 
parting on the banks of the Ayr is the theme of the song High- 
land Mary. Popular tradition has it that after plighting solemn 
troth, " they stood on either side of a brook, they dipped their 
hands in the water, exchanged Bibles — and parted." The 
poem To Mary in Heaven was written three years later, when 
Burns was living with his wife at Ellisland. 

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, 
Flow gently, I '11 sing thee a song in thy praise ; 
My Mary 's asleep by thy murmuring stream, 
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. 

5 Thou stock-dove whose echo resounds through the 
glen, 
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den. 
Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear, 
I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair. 

10. clamb, climbed ; thegither, together. 

11. canty, pleasant. 

12. ane anither, one another. 



212 ROBERT BURNS. 

How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighboring hills, 
10 Far marked with the courses of clear winding rills ; 
There daily I wander as noon rises high, 
My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye. 

How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below, 
Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow ; 
15 There oft as mild evening weeps over the lea. 
The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me. 

Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides, 
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides ; 
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave, 
20 As gathering sweet flowerets she stems thy clear 
wave. 

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, 
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays ; 
My Mary 's asleep by thy murmuring stream. 
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. 



HIGHLAND MARY. 

Tune — Katharine Ogie. 

Ye banks, and braes, and streams around 

The castle o' Montgomery, 
Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, 

Y^our waters never drumlie ! 
5 There simmer first unf auld her robes, 

And there the langest tarry ; 

16. hirk, bircli. 

4. drumlie, muddy. 

5. simmer, summer ; unfauld, unfold. 

6. langest, longest. 



HIGHLAND MARY. 213 

For there I took the last fareweel 
O' my sweet Highland Mary. 

How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk, 
10 How rich the hawthorn's blossom, 
As underneath their fragrant shade 

I clasped her to my bosom ! 
The golden hours, on angel wings, 
Flew o'er me and my dearie ; 
15 For dear to me as light and life 
Was my sweet Highland Mary. 

Wi' monie a vow, and locked embrace. 

Our parting was fu' tender ; 
And, pledging aft to meet again, 
20 We tore oursels asunder: 
But, oh ! fell death's untimely frost, 

That nipt my flower sae early ! 
Now green 's the sod, and cauld 's the clay. 

That wraps my Highland Mary ! 

25 Oh, pale, pale now, those rosy lips 
I aft hae kissed sae fondly. 
And closed for aye the sparkling glance 

That dwelt on me sae kindly ! 
And mouldering now in silent dust 
80 That heart that lo'ed me dearly ! 
But still within my bosom's core 
Shall live my Highland Mary. 



214 ROBERT BURNS. 



TO MARY IN HEAVEN. 



Thou ling'ring star, with less'ning ray, 

That lov'st to greet the early morn, 
Again thou usher'st in the day 

My Mary from my soul was torn. 
5 O Mary ! dear departed shade ! 

Where is thy place of blissful rest ? 
Seest thou thy lover lowly laid ? 

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast ? 

That sacred hour can I forget, 
10 Can I forget the hallowed grove, 
Where by the winding Ayr we met, 

To live one day of parting love ? 
Eternity will not efface 

Those records dear of transports past, 
15 Thy image at our last embrace, — 

Ah ! little thought we 't was our last ! 

Ayr, gurgling, kissed his pebbled shore, 

O'erhung with wild woods, thick'ning green ; 

The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar 
20 Twined am'rous round the raptured scene ; 

The flowers sprang wanton to be prest. 
The birds sang love on every spray — 

Till too, too soon, the glowing west 
Proclaimed the speed of winged day. 

25 Still o'er these scenes my mem'ry wakes, 
And fondly broods with miser care ; 
Time but th' impression deeper makes. 
As streams their channels deeper wear. 



I LOVE MY JEAN. 215 

My Mary ! dear departed shade ! 
30 Where is thy place of blissful rest ? ■ 
Seest thou thy lover lowly laid ? 

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast ? 



I LOVE MY JEAN. 

Tune — Miss Admiral Gordon^ s Strathspey. 

I Love My Jean bears witness to Burns's love for his wife, 
Jean Armour. "This song," he wrote, "I composed out of 
compliment to Mrs. Burns. N. B. It was in the honeymoon." 

Of a' the airts the wind can blaw 

I dearly like the west, 
For there the bonny lassie lives, 

The lassie I lo'e best : 

5 There 's wild woods grow, and rivers row, 
And monie a hill between ; 
But day and night my fancy's flight 
Is ever wi' my Jean. 

I see her in the dewy flowers, 
10 I hear her sweet and fair ; 
I see her in the tunefu' birds, 
I hear her charm the air : 

There 's not a bonny flower that springs 
By fountain, shaw, or green, 
15 There 's not a bonny bird that sings. 
But minds me o' my Jean. 

1. airts the ivind can blaw, quarters from which the wind can 
blow. 

5. row, roll. 
14. shaw, wooded dell. 



216 ROBERT BURNS. 



OH, WERT THOU IN THE CAULD BLAST. 

Miss Jessy Lewars was a young lady who helped Mrs. Burns 
to nurse the poet in his last illness. Of the origin of OA, Wert 
Thou in the Cauld Blast, she has told that one morning Burns 
called upon her, and said if she would play him any tune of 
which she was fond, he would write words for her to sing to it. 
She played a melody, and as soon as Burns had it well in his 
mind, he sat down and wrote this song in a few minutes. 

Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast 

On yonder lea, on yonder lea, 
My plaidie to the angry airt, 

I 'd shelter thee, I 'd shelter thee ! 
5 Or did Misfortune's bitter storms 

Around thee blaw, around thee blaw, 
Thy bield should be my bosom. 

To share it a', to share it a' ! 

Or were I in the wildest waste, 
10 Of earth and air, of earth and air, 
The desert were a paradise. 

If thou wert there, if thou wert there ! 
Or were I monarch o' the globe, 
Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign, 
15 The only jewel in my crown 

Wad be my queen, wad be my queen ! 



MARY MOPdSON. 217 

A RED, RED ROSE. 

Tune — Graham's Strathspey. 

Oh, my luve 's like a red, red rose, 
That 's newly sprung in June ; 

Oh, my luve 's like the melodie. 
That 's sweetly played in tune. 

5 As fair art thou, my bonny lass, 

So deep in luve am I ; 
And I will luve thee still, my dear, 
Till a' the seas gang dry. 

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, 
10 And the rocks melt wi' the sun, 
I will luve thee still, my dear. 
While the sands o' life shall run. 

And fare thee weel, my only luve I 
And fare thee weel awhile I 
15 And I will come again, my luve. 

Though it were ten thousand mile. 

MARY MORISON. 

Oh, Mary, at thy window be, 

It is the wished, the trysted hour ! 

Those smiles and glances let me see. 
That make the miser's treasure poor : 

6 How blithely wad I bide the stoure, 

A weary slave frae sun to sun, 
Could I the rich reward secure, 
The lovely Mary Morison. 



218 ROBERT BURNS. 

Yestreen, when to the trembling string 
10 The dance gaed through the lighted ha', 
To thee my fancy took its wing, 

I sat, but neither heard nor saw. 
Though this was fair, and that was braw, 
And yon the toast of a' the town, 
15 1 sighed, and said amang them a' : 
" Ye are na Mary Morison." 

Oh, Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, 
Wha for thy sake wad gladly die ? 

Or canst thou break that heart of his, 
20 Whase only f aut is loving thee ? 

If love for love thou wilt na gie, 
At least be pity to me shown ; 

A thought ungentle canna be 
The thought o' Mary Morison. 



WANDERING WILLIE. 

Here awa', there awa', wandering Willie, 
Here awa', there awa', haud awa' hame; 

Come to my bosom, my ain only dearie. 

Tell me thou bring'st me my Willie the same. 

5 Winter winds blew loud and cauld at our parting. 
Fears for my Willie brought tears in my ee ; 
Welcome now simmer, and welcome my Willie — 
The simmer to nature, my Willie to me. 

Eest, ye wild storms, in the cave of your slumbers ; 
How your dread howling a lover alarms ! 



10 



2. liaud, hold. 

3. ain^ own. 



MY NANNIE 'S A WA\ 219 

Wauken, ye breezes ! row gently, ye billows ! 

And waft my dear laddie ance mair to my arms ! 

But oh, if he 's faithless, and minds na his Nannie, 
Flow still between us, thou wide-roaring main ! 
15 May I never see it, may I never trow it. 

But, dying, believe that my Willie 's my ain. 



MY NANNIE 'S AWA. 

Now in her green mantle blithe Nature arrays, 
And listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes, 
While birds warble welcomes in ilka green shaw ; 
But to me it 's delightless — my Nannie 's awa'. 

5 The snawdrap and primrose our woodlands adorn, 
And violets bathe in the weet o' the morn ; 
They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw. 
They mind me o' Nannie — and Nannie 's awa'. 

Thou laverock that springs f rae the dews o' the lawn, 
10 The shepherd to warn o' the gray-breaking dawn ; 
And thou mellow mavis that hails the night fa'. 
Give over for pity — my Nannie 's awa'. 

Come autumn, sae pensive, in yellow and gray. 
And soothe me with tidings o' Nature's decay : 
15 The dark dreary winter and wild driving snaw 
Alane can delight me — now Nannie 's awa' ! 

11. wauken, waken. 

12. mair, more. 
3. ilka, every. 

9. laverock, lark- 
11. Tnavis, thrush. 



220 ROBERT BURNS. 

BONNIE BOON. 

Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon, 

How can ye bloom sae fair ! 
How can ye chant, ye little birds, 

And I sae fu' o' care ! 

5 Thou 'It break my heart, thou bonnie bird, 
That sings upon the bough ; 
Thou minds me o' the happy days 
When my fause love was true. 

Thou It break my heart, thou bonnie bird, 
10 That sings beside thy mate ; 
For sae I sat, and sae I sang, 
And wistna o' my fate. 

Aft hae I roved by bonnie Doon, 
To see the woodbine twine, 
15 And ilka bird sang o' its luve. 
And sae did I o' mine. 

Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose, 

Frae off its thorny tree, 
And my fause luver staw the rose, 
20 But left the thorn wi' me. 

8. fause, false. 
12. wistna, knew not. 
19. staWf stole. 



MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS. 221 

MY HEART 'S IN THE HIGHLANDS. 

Tune — Faille na Miosg. 

My heart 's in the Highlands, my heart is not here ; 
My heart 's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer ; 
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe — 
My heart 's in the Highlands wherever I go. 

5 Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North, 
The birthplace of valor, the country of worth ; 
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove. 
The hills of the Highlands forever I love. 

Farewell to the mountains high covered wdth snow ; 
10 Farewell to the straths and green valleys below ; 
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods ; 
Farewell to the torrents and loud-jDouring floods. 

My heart 's in the Highlands, my heart is not here ; 
My heart 's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer ; 
15 A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe — 
My heart 's in the Highlands wherever I go. 



CHARLES LAMB. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

In reading English literature we notice that names of 
authors fall into groups. Thus we speak of the Elizabethan 
period, and Shakespeare, Spenser, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, 
Fletcher, Beaumont, and others occur to us ; or the age of 
Queen Anne brings to mind Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift. 
Sometimes the writers of a period may have little to do 
with each other in a friendly way. Sometimes we think 
of them almost as much through their social relations as 
through their independent work. The period which ex- 
tended from near the end of the last century to the close of 
the first third of this has a certain separateness, and as we 
get farther away from it we are likely to set it off in our 
minds. It was not so great a period as the Elizabethan ; 
it had no such commanding genius as Shakespeare, but it 
was a period full of beginnings in literature, and it is very 
close to us in feeling, so that it will be long before it seems 
to be a past epoch. 

Now the interesting writers of that time were for the 
most part on very friendly terms with each other. When 
we read the lives, and the writings also, of Wordsworth, 
Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, De Quincey, Hazlitt, and others, 
we trace in each the names and personalities of the rest. 
In the essays and the letters of Charles Lamb, for example, 
we are constantly running across references to Wordsworth, 
Coleridge, Southey, and Hazlitt, and thus we think of Lamb 




^:^^^Cc^^rn/u . 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 223 

tlirough all his life as living in the society of other men of 
letters. But there was one person whose name is very 
closely and very beautifully associated with that of Charles 
Lamb, his sister, Mary Lamb. 

The Essays of Ella, by which Lamb is best known, 
abound in happy little references to his early Hfe ; but 
they are silent, as well they might be, regarding the tragedy 
which fell upon the brother and sister when they were on 
the threshold of life. Charles Lamb was born February 
10, 1775, in the Temple, the great lawyers' house on the 
banks of the Thames in London; and in London or its 
immediate neighborhood Lamb lived all his days ; he was 
restless to get back to the city when occasional slight jour- 
neys took him away. He was born in the Temple because 
his father was clerk and servant to a lawyer living there. 
He had an older brother and sister, John twelve years, and 
Mary ten years his senior. The family was poor, but when 
Charles was eight years old he had the very great privilege, 
as it was for a boy of such a family, of being admitted to 
the school known as Christ's Hospital, and there he spent 
seven years, a recollection of which he has left in one of 
the most delightful of his essays. One of his schoolmates, 
with whom he was intimate, was Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 

When he left school he was fifteen years old. He loved 
books and seemed marked out for a scholar, but he had an 
impediment in his speech which would have stood in his 
way sadly had he entered one of the learned professions ; 
but, besides, his family was poor, and he was needed as one 
of the breadwinners. His father was failing in health and 
powers ; his elder brother held a clerkship in the South 
Sea House, the offices of a great trading company to the 
South Sea, but seems to have been an easy-going, rather 
self-indulgent fellow, who would make no sacrifice of his 
own comfort for the help of his family. Mary, ten years 
older than Charles, was his dearest companion, and sym- 
pathized with him in his tastes. In his boyhood he some- 



224 CHARLES LAMB. 

times went with her to his grandmother's home in Hert- 
fordshire, and the sweet country hf e filled his mind with 
many beautiful images, though as a man he was most fas- 
cinated by the roar and fulness of city streets. 

For a short time Charles Lamb held a minor post in the 
South Sea House, but in April, 1792, he obtained a clerk- 
ship in the office of the East India ComjDany, and in the 
service of that corporation he continued all his working life, 
being finally retired from duty on a pension. With the 
earnings of his clerkship he helped maintain his aged father 
and mother, and his sister Mary. They were all living in 
a humble way in Little Queen Street. His mother was a 
confirmed invalid, his father was in his second childhood, 
and Mary was helping to sup23ort the household by needle- 
work. Charles Lamb had for three years been working 
at the East India House, when for a brief period he was 
stricken with a mild form of insanity, and had for a while 
to be kept under restraint. It is probable that the disease 
was in the family blood, for not long after Mary Lamb, 
broken down by the strain upon her, lost her reason wholly, 
and, ignorant of what she was doing, killed her mother and 
wounded her father. Charles, who was present and tried 
in vain to interpose, was himself injured. 

It was a terrible experience, and the sadness was deep- 
ened by the knowledge that they could not be sure of 
Mary's permanent recovery. She was in the asylum when 
her father died, and Charles begged to have her brought 
back to him. Thenceforth she was his companion through 
life, and outlived him. The mania never returned to afflict 
him, but from time to time Mary was obliged to go back 
to the asylum. She could commonly antici]3ate the attacks, 
and Mr. Charles Lloyd on one occasion met the brother and 
sister " slowly pacing together a little footpath in Hoxton 
fields, both weeping bitterly, and found, on joining them, 
that they were taking their solemn way to the accustomed 
asylum." 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 225 

This beautiful devotion of Charles Lamb to his sister, 
which bade him renounce marriage, was repaid by the most 
tender companionship. Both loved books and the play. 
In the essays the Bridget Elia who is so often referred to 
is hardly more than another name for Mary Lamb. Their 
cozy rooms were the gathering place for the poets, the wits, 
and the critics of their day. Charles Lamb, the gentle, as 
he was affectionately called, had a nature which was tender 
to all that was weak and erring ; especially was he ever 
solicitous for his sister's welfare. He was a reader who 
delighted in the best of old English literature, and did 
much to bring back a taste for it. He was an exceedingly 
acute critic both of literature and of some other forms of 
art, and in conversation he was constantly saying witty 
and bright things. With his sister he wrote the Tales 
from Shakespeare that are so widely known, and he wrote 
some happy verse. After his death his letters to his friends 
were published, and they are among the most delightful 
letters in the Enghsli language. 

But as has been said already, he is best known by his 
essays. He took for a signature Elia, the name of an ob- 
scure fellow clerk, and from time to time wrote playful 
papers containing reminiscences, light studies of persons, 
and sly hits at manners, delicate criticism of books, and bits 
of imaginative fancy. He contributed them one by one to 
journals, and some were not gathered into books till after 
his death, which took place December 27, 1834. Mary 
Lamb died May 20, 1847, at the age of eighty-two. 

The notes, except the slight ones in brackets, are taken 
from Canon Ainger's edition of the Essays of Elia. 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



DREAM CHILDREN: A REVERIE. 

Childken love to listen to stories about their elders 
when tJiey were children ; to stretch their imagination 
to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or gran- 
dame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit 
that my little ones crept about me the other evening 
to hear about their great-grandmother Field ,^ who lived 
in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger 
than that in which they and papa lived) which had 
been the scene — so at least it was generally believed 
in that part of the country — of the tragic incidents 
which they had lately become familiar with from the 
ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is 
that the whole story of the children and their cruel 

^ Lamb's grandmother, Mary Field, for more than fifty years 
housekeeper at Blakesware, a dower-house of the Hertfordshire 
family of Plumers, a few miles from Ware. William Plumer, 
who represented his county for so many years in Parliament, was 
still living, and Lamb may have disguised the whereabouts of 
the " great house " out of consideration for him. Why he sub- 
stituted Norfolk is only matter for conjecture. Perhaps there 
were actually scenes from the old legend of the Children in the 
Wood carved upon a chimney-piece at Blakesware ; possibly 
there was some old story in the annals of the Plumer family 
touching the mysterious disappearance of two children, for which 
it pleased Lamb to substitute the story of the familiar ballad. 
His grandmother, as he has told us in his lines The Grandame, 
was deeply versed " in anecdote domestic." 



DREAM CHILDREN. 227 

uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon 
the cliimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story 
down to the Robin Eedbreasts ; till a foolish rich per- 
son pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern in- 
vention in its stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice 
put out one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to 
be called upbraiding. Then I went on to say, how reli- 
gious and how good their great-grandmother Field was, 
how beloved and respected by everybody, though she 
was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but 
had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects 
she might be said to be the mistress of it, too) com- 
mitted to her by the owner, who preferred living in a 
newer and more fashionable mansion which he had pur- 
chased somewhere in the adjoining county ; but still 
she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, 
and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort 
while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and 
was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments 
stripped and carried away to the owner's other house, 
where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if 
some one were to carry away the old tombs they had 
seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady 
C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, 
as much as to say, " That would be foolish indeed." 
And then I told how, when she came to die, her fu- 
neral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and 
some of the gentry too, of the neighborhood for many 
miles round, to show their respect for her memory, 
because she had been such a good and religious 
woman ; so good, indeed, that she knew all the Psaltery 
by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament besides. 
Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told what 
a tall, upright, graceful person their great-grandmo- 



228 CHARLES LAMB. 

ther Field once was ; and how in her youth she was 
esteemed the best dancer — here Alice's little right 
foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my 
looking grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was say- 
ing, in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, 
came, and bowed her down with pain ; but it could 
never bend her good spirits, or make them stoop, but 
they were still upright, because she was so good and 
religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by 
herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house ; and 
how she believed that an apparition of two infants was 
to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the great 
staircase near where she slept, but she said " those in- 
nocents would do her no harm ; " and how frightened 
I used to be, though in those days I had my maid to 
sleep with me, because I was never half so good or 
religious as she — and yet I never saw the infants. 
Here John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look 
courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her 
grandchildren, having us to the great house in the holy- 
days, where I in particular used to spend many hours 
by myself in gazing upon the old busts of the twelve 
Caesars that had been Emperors of Kome, till the old 
marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be 
turned into marble with them ; how I never could be 
tired with roaming about that huge mansion, with its 
vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings, flut- 
tering tapestry, and carved oaken panels, with the 
gilding almost rubbed out — sometimes in the spacious 
old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, 
unless when now and then a solitary gardening man 
would cross me — and how the nectarines and peaches 
hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck 
them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now 



DREAM CHILDREN. 229 

and then, — and because I had more pleasure in stroll- 
ing about among the old melancholy- looking yew-trees, 
or the fii's, and picking up the red berries, and the 
fir-apples, which were good for nothing but to look at 
— or in lying about upon the fresh grass with all the 
fine garden smells around me — or basking in the 
orangery, till I could almost fancy myself rij^ening, too, 
along with the oranges and the limes in that gratefid 
warmth — or in watching the dace that darted to and 
fro in the fish-pond at the bottom of the garden, with 
here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway 
down the water in silent state, as if it mocked at their 
impertinent f riskings, — I had more pleasure in these 
busy-idle diversions than in all the sweet flavors of 
peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such-like common 
baits of children. Here John slyly deposited back 
upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, not unob- 
served by Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, 
and both seemed willing to relinquish them for the 
present as irrelevant. Then, in somewhat a more 
heightened tone, I told how, though their great-grand- 
mother Field loved all her grandchildren, yet in an 
especial manner she might be said to love their uncle, 
John L ,^ because he was so handsome and spir- 
ited a youth, and a king to the rest of us ; and, in- 

^ Of course John Lamb, the brother [then lately dead]. 
Whether Charles was ever a " lame-footed " boy, through some 
temporary cause, we cannot say. We know that at the time of 
the mother's death John Lamb was suffering from an injury to 
his foot, and made it (after his custom) an excuse for not exert- 
ing himself unduly. See the letter of Charles to Coleridge writ- 
ten at the time. " My brother, little disposed (I speak not with- 
out tenderness for him) at any time to take care of old age and 
infirmities, had now, with his bad leg, an exemption from such 
duties." 



230 CHARLES LAMB. 

stead of moping about in solitary corners, like some 
of us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse he 
could get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, 
and make it carry him half over the county in a morn- 
ing, and join the hunters when there were any out — 
and yet he loved the old great house and gardens, too, 
but had too much spirit to be always pent up within 
their boundaries — and how their uncle grew up to 
man's estate as brave as he was handsome, to the 
admiration of everybody, but of their great-grand- 
mother Field most especially ; and how he used to 
carry me upon his back when I was a lame-footed boy 
— for he was a good bit older than me — many a mile 
when I could not walk for pain ; — and how in after 
life he became lame-footed, too, and I did not always 
(I fear) make allowances enough for him when he was 
impatient and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how 
considerate he had been to me when I was lame-footed ; 
and how, when he died, though he had not been dead 
an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while 
ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and death ; 
and how I bore his death, as I thought, pretty well at 
first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me ; and 
though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, 
and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet 
I missed him all day long, and knew" not till then how 
much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and 
I missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive 
again, to be quarrelling with him (for we quarrelled 
sometimes), rather than not have him again, and was 
as uneasy without him as he, their poor uncle, must 
have been when the doctor took off his limb. — Here 
the children fell a-crying, and asked if their little 
mourning which they had on was not for uncle John, 



DREAM CHILDREN. 231 

and tliey looked up, and prayed me not to go on about 
their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their 
pretty dead mother. Then I told how for seven long 
years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet 

persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W n ; and 

as much as children could understand, I explained to 
them what coyness, and difficulty, and denial meant in 
maidens — when, suddenly turning to Alice, the soul 
of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a re- 
ality of re-presentment that I became in doubt which 
of them stood there before me, or whose that bright 
hair was ; and while I stood gazing, both the children 
gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still 
receding, till nothing at last but two mournful fea- 
tures were seen in the uttermost distance, which, with- 
out speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of 
speech : " We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are 
we children at all. The children of Alice call Bar- 
trum father. We are nothing ; less than nothing, 
and dreams. We are only what might have been, and 
must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of 

ages before we have existence and a name " and, 

immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated 
in my bachelor armchair, where I had fallen asleep, 
with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side — 
but John L. (or James Elia) was gone forever. 



232 CHARLES LAMB. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript,^ which my 
friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain 
to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their 
meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, 
just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period 
is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius 
in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, 
where he designates a kind of golden age by the term 
Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' Holiday. The manu- 
script goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or 
rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother), 
was accidentally discovered in the manner following. 
The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the 
woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect 
mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his 
eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being 
fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age com- 
monly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of 
straw, which kindling quickly, spread the conflagra- 
tion over every part of their poor mansion, till it was 

^ The tradition as to the origin of cooking, which is of course 
the salient feature of this essay, had been communicated to 
Lamb, he here tells us, by his friend M., Thomas Manning, 
whose acquaintance he had made long ago at Cambridge, and 
who since those days had spent much of his life in exploring 
China and Thibet. Lamb says the same thing in one of his pri- 
vate letters, so we may accept it as a literal fact. The question 
therefore arises whether Manning had found the legend existing 
in any form in China, or whether Lamb's detail of the Chinese 
manuscript is wholly fantastic. It is at least certain that the 
story is a very old one, and appears as early as the third century, 
in the writings of Porphyry of Tyre. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 233 

reduced to aslies. Together with the cottage (a sorry 
antediluvian makeshift of a building, you may think 
it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter 
of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, 
perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury 
all over the East, from the remotest periods that we 
read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as 
you may think, not so much for the sake of the tene- 
ment, which his father and he could easily build up 
again with a few dry branches, and the labor of an 
hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. 
While he was thinking what he should say to his 
father, and wringing his hands over the smoking 
remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odor 
assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had 
before experienced. What could it proceed from? 
— not from the burnt cottage — he had smelt that 
smell before — indeed, this was by no means the first 
accident of the kind which had occurred through the 
negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. Much 
less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, 
or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same 
time overflowed his nether lij). He knew not what 
to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if 
there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fin- 
gers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby 
fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the 
scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and 
for the first time in his life (in the world's life 
indeed, for before him no man had known it) he 
tasted — cr adding ! Again he felt and fumbled at 
the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he 
licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth 
at length broke into his slow understanding, that it 



234 CHARLES LAMB. 

was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so 
delicious; and, surrendering himself up to the new- 
born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls 
of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was 
cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, 
when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, 
armed with retributory cudgel, and, finding how affairs 
stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's 
shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded 
not any more than if they had been flies. The tick- 
ling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower 
regions, had rendered him quite callous to any incon- 
veniences he might feel in those remote quarters. 
His father might lay on, but he could not beat him 
from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, 
when, becoming a little more sensible of his situa- 
tion, something like the following dialogue ensued. 

"You graceless whelp, what have you got there 
devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt 
me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be 
hanged to you! but you must be eating fire, and I 
know not what — what have you got there, I say?" 

"O father, the pig, the pig! do come and taste 
how nice the burnt pig eats." 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed 
his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should 
beget a son that should eat burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened 
since morning, soon raked out another pig, and, fairly 
rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main 
force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, 
eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste — O Lord! " 
— with such-like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all 
the while as if he would choke. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 235 

Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the 
abominable thing, wavering whether he should not 
put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, 
when, the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had 
done his son's, and applying the same remedy to 
them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavor, which, 
make what sour mouths he would for a pretence, 
proved not altogether displeasing to him. In conclu- 
sion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious), both 
father and son fairly set down to the mess, and never 
left off till they had dispatched all that remained of 
the litter. 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret 
escape, for the neighbors would certainly have stoned 
them for a console of abominable wretches, who could 
think of improving upon the good meat which God 
had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got 
about. It was observed that Ho-ti 's cottage was 
burnt down now more frequently than ever. Nothing 
but fires from this time forward. Some would break 
out in broad day, others in the night-time. As often 
as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to 
be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more 
remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to 
grow more indulgent to him than ever. At leng-th 
they were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, 
and father and son summoned to take their trial at 
Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence 
was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in 
court, and 'verdict about to be pronounced, when the 
foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt 
pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be 
handed into the box. He handled it, and they all 
handled it ; and, burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and 



236 CHARLES LAMB. 

his father had done before them, and nature prompt- 
ing to each of them the same remedy, against the 
face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which 
judge had ever given, — to the surprise of the whole 
court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all pres- 
ent, — without leaving the box, or any manner of con- 
sultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous 
verdict of Not Guilty. 

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at 
the manifest iniquity of the decision : and when the 
court was dismissed, went privily and bought up all 
the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a 
few days his lordship's town-house was observed to be 
on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was no- 
thing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and 
pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The 
insurance-offices one and all shut up shop. People 
built slighter and slighter every day, until it was 
feared that the very science of architecture would 
in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this cus- 
tom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, 
says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, 
who made a discovery that the flesh of swine, or 
indeed of any other animal, might be cooked (burnt^ 
as they called it) without the necessity of consuming 
a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude 
form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string or spit 
came in a century or two later, I forget in whose 
dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the manu- 
script, do the most useful, and seemingly the most 
obvious, arts make their way among mankind. 

Without placing too implicit faith in the account 
above given, it must be agreed that if a worthy pre- 
text for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 237 

on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in 
favor of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse 
might be found in roast pig. 

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, 
I will maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps 
ohsoniorum. 

I speak not of your grown porkers — things be- 
tween pig and pork — those hobbledehoys — but a 
young and tender suclding — under a moon old — 
guiltless as yet of the sty — with no original speck 
of the amor im772U7iditicB, the hereditary failing of 
the first parent, yet manifest — his voice as yet not 
broken, but something between a childish treble and 
a grumble — the mild forerunner or p>rceludium of a 
grunt. 

He must he roasted. I am not ignorant that our 
ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a 
sacrifice of the exterior tegument ! 

There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to 
that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over- 
roasted, crachling., as it is well called — the very 
teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this 
banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance — 
with the adhesive oleaginous — O call it not fat ! but 
an indefinable sweetness growing up to it — the ten- 
der blossoming of fat — fat cropped in the bud — 
taken in the shoot — in the first innocence — the 
cream and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pui'e 
food — the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna 
— or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so 
blended and running into each other, that both to- 
gether make but one ambrosian result or common 
substance. 

Behold him while he is "doing" — it seemeth 



238 CHARLES LAMB. 

rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, 
that he is so passive to. How equably he twirleth 
round the string ! Now he is just done. To see the ex- 
treme sensibility of that tender age ! he hath wept out 
his pretty eyes — radiant jellies — shooting stars. — 

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek 
he lieth! — wouldst thou have had this innocent grow 
up to the grossness and indocility which too often ac- 
company maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would 
have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagree- 
able animal — wallowing in all manner of filthy con- 
versation — from these sins he is happily snatched 
away — 

" Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 
Death came with timely care " ^ — 

his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, while 
his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no coal- 
heaver bolteth him in reeking sausages — he hath a 
fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious 
epicure — and for such a tomb might be content to 
die. 

He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is great. 
She is indeed almost too transcendent — a delight, if 
not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender- 
conscienced person would do well to pause — too rav- 
ishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth 
the lips that approach her — like lovers' kisses, she 
biteth — she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the 

^ From Coleridge's Epitaph on an Infant. It must have been 
with unusual glee that Lamb here borrowed half of his friend's 
quatrain. The epitaph had appeared in the very earliest volume 
to which he was himself a contributor — the little volume of 
Coleridge's poems, published in 1796, by Joseph Cottle, of Bris- 
tol. The lines are there allotted a whole page to themselves. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 239 

fierceness and insanity of her relish — but she stop- 
peth at the palate — she mecldleth not with the ap- 
petite — and the coarsest hunger might barter her 
consistently for a mutton-chop. 

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provoca- 
tive of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the criti- 
calness of the censorious palate. The strong man 
may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not 
his mild juices. 

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of 
virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not 
to be unravelled without hazard, he is — good through- 
out. No part of him is better or worse than an- 
other. He helpeth, as far as his little means extend, 
all around. He is the least envious of banquets. He 
is all neighbors' fare. 

I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly 
impart a share of the good things of this life which 
fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a 
friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my 
friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfac- 
tions, as in mine own. "Presents," I often say, "en- 
dear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, 
barn-door chickens (those "tame villatic fowl,") 
capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense 
as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as 
it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop 
must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, 
"give everything." I make my stand upon pig. 
Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good 
flavors to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house 
slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I know 
not what), a blessing so particularly adapted, predes- 
tined, I may say, to my individual palate. It argues 
an insensibility. 



240 CHARLES LAMB. 

I remember a toucli of conscience in this kind at 
school. My good old aunt, who never parted from 
me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweet- 
meat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dis- 
missed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, 
fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was 
over London Bridge) a gray -headed old beggar saluted 
me (I have no doubt, at this time of day, that he 
was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him 
with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very 
coxcombry of charity, schoolboy -like, I made him a 
present of — the whole cake! I walked on a little, 
buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet 
soothing of self-satisfaction; but, before I had got to 
the end of the bridge, my better feelings returned, 
and I burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful I 
had been to my good aunt, to go and give her good 
gift away to a stranger that I had never seen before, 
and who might be a bad man for aught I knew; and 
then I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be 
taking in thinking that I — I myself, and not another 
— would eat her nice cake — and what should I say 
to her the next time I saw her — how naughty I was 
to part with her pretty present ! — and the odor of 
that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and 
the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing 
her make it, and her joy when she sent it to the oven, 
and how disappointed she would feel that I had never 
had a bit of it in my mouth at last — and I blamed 
my impertinent spirit of alms -giving, and out-of -place 
hypocrisy of goodness ; and above all I wished never 
to see the face again of that insidious, good-for- 
nothing, old gray impostor. 

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacri- 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 241 

ficing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to 
death with something of a shock, as we hear of any 
other obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone 
by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophi- 
cal light merely) what effect this process might have 
towards intenerating and dulcifying a substance, natu- 
rally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. 
It looks like refining a violet. Yet we shoidd be 
cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, how we 
censure the wisdom of the practice. It might imjDart 
a gusto. 

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the 
young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and main- 
tained with much learning and pleasantry on both 
sides, "Whether, supposing that the flavor of a pig 
who obtained his death by whipping (per flagella- 
tionem extremam^) superadded a pleasure upon the 
palate of a man more intense than any possible suf- 
fering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified 
in using that method of putting the animal to death? '* 
I forget the decision. 

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few 
bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, 
and a dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. 
Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbe- 
cue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in 
shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank 
and guilty garlic; you cannot poison them, or make 
them stronger than they are — but consider, he is a 
weakling — a flower. 

^ [That is, by a tremendous thrashing.] 



242 CHARLES LAMB. 



BAEBAEA S- 



On the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 4, 
I forget which it was, just as the clock had struck 
one, Barbara S ,^ with her accustomed punctual- 
ity, ascended the long rambling staircase, with av/k- 
ward interposed landing-places, which led to the 
office, or rather a sort of box with a desk in it, 
whereat sat the then treasurer of (what few of our 
readers may remember) the old Bath Theatre. All 
over the island it was the custom, and remains so I 
believe to this day, for the players to receive their 
weekly stipend on the Saturday. It was not much 
that Barbara had to claim. 

The little maid had just entered her eleventh year; 
but her important station at the theatre, as it seemed 

^ The note appended by Lamb to this essay, as to the heroine 
being named Street, and having three times changed her name 
by successive marriages, is one of the most elaborate of his fic- 
tions. The real heroine of the story, as admitted by Lamb at the 
time, was the admirable comedian, Famiy Kelly, an attached 
friend of Charles and Mary Lamb, who has just died (December, 
1882) at the advanced age of ninety-two. In the year 1875 Miss 
Kelly furnished Mr. Charles Kent, who was editing the cente- 
nary edition of Lamb's works, with her own interesting version 
of the anecdote. It was in 1799, when Fanny Kelly was a child 
of nine, that the incident occurred, not at the old Bath Theatre, 
but at Drury Lane, where she had been admitted as a " minia- 
ture chorister," at a salary of a pound a week. After his man- 
ner, Lamb has changed every detail — the heroine, the site of 
the theatre, the amount of the salary, the name of the treasurer. 
Even following Charles Lamb, Miss Kelly has told her own 
story with much graphic power. 

Miss Kelly, with the " divine plain face," was a special favor- 
ite of Lamb's. See his sonnets, To Miss Kelly, and To a cele- 
brated female performer in " The Blind Boy" 



BARBARA S . 243 

to her, witli the benefits which she felt to accrue 
from her pious application of her small earnings, had 
given an air of womanhood to her steps and to her 
behavior. You would have taken her to have been 
at least five years older. 

Till latterly, she had merely been employed in 
choruses, or where children were wanted to fill up the 
scene. But the manager, observing a diligence and 
adroitness in her above her age, had for some few 
months past intrusted to her the performance of 
whole parts. You may guess the self -consequence of 
the promoted Barbara. She had already drawn tears 
in young Arthur; had rallied Richard with infan- 
tine petulance in the Duke of York; and in her tiu^n 
had rebuked that petulance when she was Prince of 
Wales. She would have done the elder child in 
Morton's pathetic after j)iece to the life; but as yet 
the Children in the Wood was not.^ 

Long after this little girl was grown an aged 
woman, I have seen some of these small parts, each 
making two or three pages at most, copied out in the 
rudest hand of the then prompter, who doubtless 
transcribed a little more carefully and fairly for the 
grown-up tragedy ladies of the establishment. But 
such as they were, blotted and scrawled, as for a 
child's use, she kept them all; and in the zenith of 
her after reputation it was a delightful sight to 
behold them bomid up in costliest morocco, each 

1 This is an ingenious way of intimating that Miss Kelly did 
play the elder child in the Children in the Wood. The drama 
was first produced in 1793. The incident of the roast fowl and 
the spilt salt, recorded later on, occurs in the last scene of this 
play. The famished children, just rescued from the wood, are 
fed by the faithful Walter with a roast chicken, over which he 
has just before, in his agitation, upset the salt-box. 



244 CHARLES LAMB. 

single — eacli small part making a hooh — witli fine 
clasps, gilt -splashed, etc. Slie had conscientiously 
kept tkem as tliey had been delivered to her ; not a 
blot had been effaced or tampered with. They were 
precious to her for their affecting remembrancings. 
They were her principia, her rudiments ; the elemen- 
tary atoms; the little steps by which she pressed for- 
ward to perfection. "What," she would say, "could 
India-rubber, or a pumice-stone, have done for these 
darlings?" 

I am in no hurry to begin my story — indeed, I 
have little or none to tell — so I will just mention an 
observation of hers connected with that interesting 
time. 

Not long before she died I had been discoursing 
with her on the quantity of real present emotion 
which a great tragic performer experiences during 
acting. I ventured to think, that though in the first 
instance such players must have possessed the feel- 
ings which they so powerfully called up in others, 
yet by frequent repetition those feelings must become 
deadened in great measure, and the performer trust 
to the memory of past emotion, rather than express 
a present one. She indignantly repelled the notion, 
that with a truly great tragedian the operation, by 
which such effects were produced upon an audience, 
could ever degrade itself into what was purely me- 
chanical. With much delicacy, avoiding to instance 
in her seZ/-experience, she told me, that so long ago 
as when she used to play the part of the Little Son 
to Mrs. Porter's Isabella (I think it was), when that 
impressive actress has been bending over her in some 
heart-rending colloquy, she has felt real hot tears 
come trickling from her, which (to use her powerful 
expression) have perfectly scalded her back. 



BARBARA S . 245 

I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter; 
but it was some great actress of that day. The name 
is indifferent; but the fact of the scalding tears I 
most distinctly remember. 

I was always fond of the society of players, and 
am not sure that an impediment in my sj)eech (which 
certainly kept me out of the pulpit), even more than 
certain personal disqualifications, which are often got 
over in that profession, did not prevent me at one time 
of life from adopting it. I have had the honor (I must 
ever call it) once to have been admitted to the tea- 
table of Miss Kelly. I have played at serious whist 
with Mr. Liston. I have chatted with ever good- 
humored Mrs. Charles Kemble. I have conversed 
as friend to friend with her accomplished husband. 
I have been indulged with a classical conference with 
Macready; and with a sight of the Player-picture 
gallery, at Mr. Mathews's, when the kind owner, to 
remunerate me for my love of the old actors (whom 
he loves so much), went over it with me, supplying 
to his capital collection, what alone the artist could 
not give them — voice; and their living motion. Old 
tones, half -faded, of Dodd, and Parsons, and Badde- 
ley, have lived again for me at his bidding. Only 
Edwin he could not restore to me. I have supped 
with ; but 1 am growing a coxcomb. 

As I was about to say — at the desk of the then 
treasurer of the old Bath Theatre — not Diamond's 
— presented herself the little Barbara S . 

The parents of Barbara had been in reputable cir- 
cumstances. The father had practised, I believe, as 
an apothecary in the town. But his practice, from 
causes which I feel my own infirmity too sensibly 
that way to arraign, — or perhaps from that pure in- 



246 CHARLES LAMB. 

felicity which accompanies some people in their walk 
through life, and which it is impossible to lay at the 
door of imprudence, — was now reduced to nothing. 
They were, in fact, in the very teeth of starvation, 
when the manager, who knew a.nd respected them in 
better days, took the little Barbara into his company. 

At the period I commenced with, her slender earn- 
ings were the sole support of the family, including 
two younger sisters. I must throw a veil over some 
mortifying circumstances. Enough to say, that her 
Saturday's pittance was the only chance of a Sun- 
day's (generally their only) meal of meat. 

One thing I will only mention, that in some child's 
part, where in her theatrical character she was to 
sup off a roast fowl (O joy to Barbara!), some comic 
actor, who was for the night caterer for this dainty 
— in the misguided humor of his part, threw over 
the dish such a quantity of salt (O grief and pain of 
heart to Barbara!) that when he crammed a portion 
of it into her mouth, she was obliged sputteringly to 
reject it ; and what with shame of her ill-acted part, 
and pain of real appetite at missing such a dainty, 
her little heart sobbed almost to breaking, till a flood 
of tears, which the well-fed spectators were totally 
unable to comprehend, mercifully relieved her. 

This was the little starved, meritorious maid, who 
stood before old Ravenscroft, the treasurer, for her 
Saturda^y's payment. 

Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many old 
theatrical people besides herself say, of all men least 
calculated for a treasurer. He had no head for ac- 
counts, paid away at random, kept scarce any books, 
and summing up at the week's end, if he found him- 
self a pound or so deficient, blest himself that it was 
no worse. 



BARBARA S . 247 

Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare balf- 
guinea. — By mistake lie popped into her band — a 
whole one. 

Barbara tripped away. 

She was entirely unconscious at first of the mis- 
take ; God knows, Ravenscroft would never have dis- 
covered it. 

But when she had got down to the first of those 
uncouth landing-places, she became sensible of an 
unusual weight of metal pressing in her little hand. 

Now mark the dilemma. 

She was by nature a good child. From her parents 
and those about her, she had imbibed no contrary 
influence. But then they had taught her nothing. 
Poor men's smoky cabins are not always porticoes of 
moral philosophy. This little maid had no instinct 
to evil, but then she might be said to have no fixed 
principle. She had heard honesty commended, but 
never dreamed of its application to herself. She 
thought of it as something which concerned grown- 
up) people, men and women. She had never known 
temptation, or thought of preparing resistance against 
it. 

Her first impulse was to go back to the old treas- 
urer, and explain to him his blunder. He was al- 
ready so confused with age, besides a natural want 
of punctuality, that she would have had some diffi- 
culty in making him understand it. She saw that in 
an instant. And then it was such a bit of money ! 
and then the image of a larger allowance of butcher's 
meat on their table the next day came across her, till 
her little eyes glistened, and her mouth moistened. 
But then Mr. Ravenscroft had always been so good- 
natured, had stood her friend behind the scenes, and 



248 CHARLES LAMB. 

even recommended her promotion to some of her little 
parts. But again the old man was reputed to be 
worth a world of money. He was supposed to have 
fifty pounds a year clear of the theatre. And then 
came staring upon her the figures of her little stock- 
inofless and shoeless sisters. And when she looked 
at her own neat white cotton stockings, which her 
situation at the theatre had made it indispensable for 
her mother to provide for her, with hard straining 
and pinching from the family stock, and thought how 
glad she should be to cover their poor feet with the 
same — and how then they could accompany her to 
rehearsals, which they had hitherto been precluded 
from doing, by reason of ^heir unfashionable attire, 
— in these thoughts she reached the second landing- 
place — the second, I mean, from the top — for there 
was still another left to traverse. 

Now virtue support Barbara ! 

And that never-failing friend did step in — for at 
that moment a strength not her own, I have heard 
her say, was revealed to her — a reason above reason- 
ing — and without her own agency, as it seemed (for 
she never felt her feet to move), she found herself 
transported back to the individual desk she had just 
quitted, and her hand in the old hand of Ravenscroft, 
who in silence took back the refunded treasure, and 
who had been sitting (good man) insensible to the 
lapse of minutes, which to her were anxious ages, 
and from that moment a deep peace fell upon her 
heart, and she knew the quality of honesty. 

A year or two's unrepining application to her pro- 
fession brightened up the feet and the prospects of 
her little sisters, set the whole family upon their legs 
again, and released her from the difficulty of discuss- 
ing moral dogmas upon a landing-place. 



OLD CHINA. 249 

I have heard her say that it was a surprise, not 
much short of mortification to her, to see the coolness 
with which the old man pocketed the difference, 
which had caused her such mortal throes. 

This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800, 
from the mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford,^ then 
sixty-seven years of age (she died soon after); and to 
her struggles upon this childish occasion I have some- 
times ventured to think her indebted for that power 
of rending the heart in the representation of conflict- 
ing emotions, for which in after years she was consid- 
ered as little inferior (if at all so in the part of Lady 
Kandolph) even to Mrs. Siddons. 



OLD CHINA. 

I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china. 
When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the 
china-closet, and next for the picture-gallery. I can- 
not defend the order of preference, but by saying 
that we have all some taste or other, of too ancient 
a date to admit of our remembering distinctly that it 
was an acquired one. I can call to mind the first 
play, and the first exhibition, that I was taken to; 
but I am not conscious of a time when china jars and 
saucers were introduced into my imagination. 

I had no repugnance then — why should I now 
have? — to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured gro- 
tesques, that, under the notion of men and women, 

1 The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she changed, 
by successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry and Craw- 
ford. She was Mrs. Crawford, a third time a widow, when I 
knew her. C. L. 



250 CHARLES LAMB. 

float about, uncirciimscribed by any element, in tbat 
world before perspective — a china teacup. 

I like to see my old friends — whom distance can- 
not diminisb — figuring up in the air (so they appear 
to our optics), yet on terra firma still — for so we 
must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue, 
which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, had 
made to spring up beneath their sandals. 

I love the men with women's faces, and the women, 
if possible, with still more womanish expressions. 

Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing 
tea to a lady from a salver — two miles off. See 
how distance seems to set off respect ! And here the 
same lady, or another — for likeness is identity on 
teacups — is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored 
on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a 
dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of inci- 
dence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land 
her in the midst of a flowery mead — a furlong off 
on the other side of the same strange stream ! 

Farther on — if far or near can be predicted of 
their world — see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the 
hays.^ 

Here — a cow and rabbit couchant, and coexten- 
sive — so objects show, seen through the lucid atmos- 
phere of fine Cathay. 

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over 
our Hyson (which we are old-fashioned enough to 
drink unmixed still of an afternoon), some of these 

1 The hays was an old English dance, involving some intricate 
figures. It seems to have been known in England up to fifty 
years ago. The dance is often referred to in the writers whom 
Lamb most loved. Herrick, for example, has — 

" On holy-dayes, when Virgins meet 
To dance the Heyes, with nimble feet." 



OLD CHINA. 251 

speciosa miracula ^ upon a set of extraordinary old 
blue cliina (a recent purchase) which we were now for 
the first time using; and could not help remarking, 
how favorable circumstances had been to us of late 
years, that we could afford to please the eye some- 
times with trifles of this sort — when a passing senti- 
ment seemed to overshade the brows of my compan- 
ion. I am quick at detecting these summer clouds 
in Bridget. 2 

"I wish the good old times would come again," 
she said, "when we were not quite so rich. I do not 
mean that I want to be poor; but there was a middle 
state," — so she was pleased to ramble on, — "in 
which I am sure we were a great deal happier. A 
purchase is but a purchase, now that you have money 
enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a tri- 
umph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, O! 
how much ado I had to get you to consent in those 
times !) — we were used to have a debate two or three 
days before, and to weigh the Jvr and against, and 
think what we might spare it out of, and what saving 
we could hit upon, th^t should be an equivalent. A 
thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money 
that we paid for it. 

"Do you remember the brown suit, which you 
made to hang upon you, till all your friends cried 
shame upon you, it grew so threadbare — and all 
because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which 
you dragged home late at night from Barker's in 
Covent Garden? Do you remember how we eyed it 
for weeks before we could make up our minds to the 

^ [Beautiful wonders.] 

2 [Bridget Elia was a playful veiling of the personality of 
Mary Lamb.] 



252 CHARLES LAMB. 

purchase, and had not come to a determination till it 
was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you 
set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late 
— and when the old bookseller with some grumbling 
opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he 
was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his 
dusty treasures — and when you lugged it home, 
wishing it were twice as cumbersome — and when you 
presented it to me — and when we were exploring the 
perf ectness of it {collating., you called it) — and while 
I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, 
which your impatience would not suffer to be left till 
day -break — was there no pleasure in being a poor 
man? or can those neat black clothes which you wear 
now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since we 
have become rich and finical — give you half the hon- 
est vanity with which you flaunted it about in that 
overworn suit — your old corbeau — for four or five 
weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify 
your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen — or 
sixteen shillings was it? — a great affair we thought 
it then — which you had lavished on the old folio. 
Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, 
but I do not see that you ever bring me home any 
nice old purchases now. 

" When you came home with twenty apologies for 
laying out a less number of shillings upon that print 
after Lionardo, which we christened the ' Lady 
Blanche,' when you looked at the purchase, and 
thought of the money — and thought of the money, 
and looked again at the picture — was there no pleas- 
ure in being a poor man ? Now, you have nothing to 
do but to walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness 
of Lionardos. Yet do you? 



OLD CHINA. 253 

"Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to 
Enfield, and Potter's bar, and Waltham, wben we 
bad a bolyday — bolydays and all other fun are gone 
now we are rich — and the little hand-basket in 
which I used to deposit our day's fare of savory cold 
lamb and salad — and how you would pry about at 
noontide for some decent house, where we might go 
in and produce our store — only paying for the ale 
that you must call for — and speculate upon the looks 
of the landlady, and whether she was likely to allow 
us a tablecloth — and wish for such another honest 
hostess as Izaak Walton has described many a one on 
the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a-fishing 

— and sometimes they would prove obliging enough, 
and sometimes they would look grudgingly upon us 

— but we had cheerful looks still for one another, 
and would eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudg- 
ing Piscator his Trout Hall ? Now — when we go out 
a day's pleasuring, which is seldom, moreover, we 
ride part of the way, and go into a fine inn, and 
order the best of dinners, never debating the expense, 
which, after all, never has half the relish of those 
chance country snaps, when we were at the mercy of 
uncertain usage, and a precarious welcome. 

"You are too proud to see a play anywhere now 
but in the pit. Do you remember where it was we 
used to sit, when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and 
the Surrender of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. 
Bland in the Children in the Wood — when we 
squeezed out our shillings apiece to sit three or four 
times in a season in the one-shilling gallery — where 
you felt all the time that you ought not to have 
brought me — and more strongly I felt obligation to 
you for having brought me — and the pleasiu'e was 



254 CHARLES LAMB. 

the better for a little shame — and when the curtain 
drew up, what cared we for our place in the house, 
or what mattered it where we were sitting, when our 
thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, or with Viola 
at the Court of lUyria? You used to say that the 
gallery was the best place of all for enjoying a play 
socially — that the relish of such exhibitions must be 
in proportion to the inf requency of going — that the 
company we met there, not being in general readers 
of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did 
attend, to what was going on, on the stage — because 
a word lost would have been a chasm, which it was im- 
possible for them to fill up. With such reflections we 
consoled our pride then, and I appeal to you whether, 
as a woman, I met generally with less attention and 
accommodation than I have done since in more expen- 
sive situations in the house ? The getting in, indeed, 
and the crowding up those inconvenient staircases, 
was bad enough, but there was still a law of civility 
to woman recognized to quite as great an extent as 
we ever found in the other passages — and how a 
little difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat 
and the play, afterwards! Now we can only pay 
our money and walk in. You cannot see, you say, 
in the galleries now. I am sure we saw, and heard 
too, well enough then, but sight and all, I think, is 
gone with our poverty. 

"There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before 
they became quite common — in the first dish of peas, 
while they were yet dear — to have them for a nice 
supper, a treat. What treat can we have now? If 
we were to treat ourselves now — that is, to have 
dainties a little above our means, it would be selfish 
and wicked. It is the very little more that we allow 



OLD CHINA. 255 

ourselves beyond what the actual poor can get at, that 
makes what I call a treat — when two people, living 
together as we have clone, now and then indulge 
themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like ; while 
each apologizes, and is willing to take both halves of 
the blame to his single share. I see no harm in peo- 
ple making much of themselves, in that sense of the 
word. It may give them a hint how to make much 
of others. But now — what I mean by the word — 
we never do make much of ourselves. None but the 
poor can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of 
all, but persons as we were, just above poverty. 

"I know what you were going to say, that it is 
mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make all 
meet, — and much ado we used to have every Thirty- 
first Night of December to account for our exceed- 
ings — many a long face did you make over your 
puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it out 
how we had spent so much — or that we had not 
spent so much — or that it was impossible we should 
spend so much next year — and still we found our 
slender capital decreasing — but then, betwixt ways, 
and projects, and compromises of one sort or another, 
and talk of curtailing this charge, and doing without 
that for the future — and the hope that youth brings, 
and laughing spirits (in which you were never poor 
till now), we pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, 
with ' lusty brimmers ' (as you used to quote it out of 
hearty cheerful Mr. Cotton^ as you called him), we 
used to welcome in the ' coming guest.' Now we 
have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year, 
no flattering promises about the new year doing bet- 
ter for us." 

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occa- 



256 CHARLES LAMB. 

sions, that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am 
careful how I interrupt it. I could not help, how- 
ever, smiling at the phantom of wealth which her 
dear imagination had conjured up out of a clear in- 
come of poor hundred pounds a year. 

"It is true we were happier when we were poorer, 
but we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid we 
must put up with the excess, for if we were to shake 
the superflux into the sea, we should not much mend 
ourselves. That we had much to struggle with, as we 
grew up together, we have reason to be most thank- 
ful. It strengthened and knit our compact closer. 
We could never have been what we have been to each 
other, if we had always had the sufficiency which 
you now complain of. The resisting power — those 
natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which circum- 
stances cannot straiten — with us are long since 
passed away. Competence to age is supplementary 
youth, a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best 
that is to be had. We must ride where we formerly 
walked : live better and lie softer — and shall be wise 
to do so — than we had means to do in those good old 
days you speak of. Yet could those days return — 
could you and I once more walk our thirty miles a 
day — could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be 
young, and you and I be young to see them — could 
the good old one -shilling gallery days return — they 
are dreams, my cousin, now — but could you and I 
at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by 
our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious 
sofa — be once more struggling up those inconvenient 
staircases, pushed about and squeezed, and elbowed 
by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers ■ — 
could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of 



OLD CHINA. 257 

yours, and the delicious Thanh God, we are safe, 
which always followed when the topmost stair, con- 
quered, let in the first light of the whole cheerful 
theatre down beneath us — I know not the fathom 
line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would 
be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or 

the great Jew R is supposed to have, to purchase 

it. And now do just look at that merry little Chi- 
nese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a 
bed-tester, over the head of that pretty insipid half 
Madonna-ish chit of a lady in that very blue summer 
house." 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

Ix his clumsily entitled Extempore Effusion iii^on the 
Death of James Hogg, Wordsworth has these lines, after 
referring to Hogg and to Walter Scott : — 

" Nor has the rolling year twice measured, 
From sign to sign, its steadfast course, 
Since every mortal power of Coleridge 
Was frozen at its marvellous source ; . . . 
The rapt One, of the god-like forehead. 
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth." 

And in his poem, Resolution and Indejjendence, though he 
does not name Coleridge, it is almost certain that he had 
him in mind when he wrote : — 

" My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought, 
As if life's business were a summer mood; 
As if all needful things would come unsought 
To genial faith, still rich in genial good; 
But how can he expect that others should 
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call 
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all ? " 

When he read the news of Coleridge's death, Words- 
worth's voice faltered and broke, as he said he was the 
most wonderful man that he had ever known. 

It is always worth while to know what one poet thinks 
of another, especially if the two have been contemporaries, 
friends, intimate companions. Wordsworth and Coleridge 




,j/^ y^ CiT'^y^'^-^y 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 259 

were such. Wordsworth was severe, cold, much given to 
calm judgment ; Coleridge was impulsive, erring, warm- 
hearted : each knew the other as a great poet, but Words- 
worth led a correct, diligent life ; he was prudent and 
thrifty, a good housekeeper, a projDer husband and father ; 
Coleridge had magnificent plans and dreams ; he was indo- 
lent, and, falling into the terrible habit of opium, he strug- 
gled like a drowning man against the fate which seemed 
to have overtaken him ; he left great works incomplete, 
scarcely begun, indeed ; he married in haste and repented 
at leisure ; he submitted to be helped by his friends, but 
he gave lavishly of the best he had to his friends, and no 
one can read his painful biography without seeing that he 
so impressed himself successively on one after another, as 
never to want the sympathy and loving help which should 
carry him over difficulties. 

He was born at the vicarage of Ottery St. Mary, in Dev- 
onshire, England, October 21, 1772. His father was a 
clergyman of the Church of England, and a schoolmaster, 
good-hearted, absent-minded, and impractical. The jioet 
was one of a large family, and his childhood was that of a 
precocious and imaginative boy, who read fairy tales and 
acted out the scenes in them, living much by himself and in 
the world wliich he created out of his dreams. When he 
was nine years old his father died, and the next year Cole- 
ridge entered the great public school of Christ's Hospital, 
where he was a schoolfellow of Charles Lamb. From school 
he went up to Cambridge, and there he made Wordsworth's 
acquaintance, but his college life was a broken and not very 
satisfactory one. Indeed, at one time, for reasons not 
wholly clear, he broke away and enlisted under an assumed 
name in a regiment of dragoons. It was an odd jump 
from the frying-pan into the fire, for he had a violent an- 
tipathy to soldiers and horses, as he himself confessed, 
and he was glad when his concealment was discovered and 
a way was found for the runaway to return to college. 



260 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

While still a student he made an excursion with a friend 
to Oxford, and there he fell in with Robert Southey. It 
was the restless time of the French Revolution, and these 
young students and enthusiasts were eager to try some new 
order of life in some new world. With a few others they 
concocted a scheme to which they gave the name " Panti- 
socracy," or the equal rule of all, and proposed to form a 
community on the banks of the Susquehanna in Pennsyl- 
vania, where two or three hours' labor a day on the part of 
each would suffice for the community, and then the remain- 
ing time could be given to philosophy, poetry, and all the 
arts. Southey was married presently, and Coleridge was 
thrown much with Mrs. Southey's sister, Sara Fricker, as a 
result of which, in connection with a disappointment in love 
in another quarter, he hastily married. 

Among his friends at this time in Bristol, where the 
Frickers lived, was Joseph Cottle, a bookseller, who had 
great faith in Coleridge's literary powers. He undertook 
the publication of a volume of poems, and by lending and 
giving money, carried the new couple along for some time. 
Coleridge at the time of his marriage was twenty-three 
years old. Southey's marriage, as well, probably, as the 
return of reason after a short flight, had cooled his ardor 
for experiments in Utopia, and the pantisocratic scheme 
faded out. For nearly a score of years, Coleridge and his 
wife, and the children born to them, led a shifting life ; 
sometimes they were together, sometimes they were sepa- 
rated. Now, Coleridge would make a stay in Germany, 
now, they would be all together with the Wordsworths and 
Southey s in the Lake Country, but by 1813 the somewhat 
unhappy connection, unhappy as the union of an irrespon- 
sible, dreamy husband with a wife of limited intellectual 
sympathy, came practically to an end. For three years 
Coleridge led a dreary life, lecturing, abiding with friends, 
and struggling against the habit of opium which had fast- 
ened itself on him. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 261 

In 1816 he put himself under the care of Dr. Gillman, 
living at Highgate, on the outskirts of London, and there 
he spent the last sixteen years of his life, cared for by a 
kind physician, making occasional journeys into other parts 
of England and to the Continent, receiving many visitors, 
and continuing to write both prose and verse. His most 
notable poems were written in the closing years of the eigh- 
teenth century, and Coleridge did not die till July 25, 1834. 
In that full generation, Coleridge's great contributions were 
in the form of literary, philosophical, religious, and theolo- 
gical writings, but the one spirit which brooded over all was 
a large imagination, which gave him the power to see more 
widely and send his plummet deeper than any man of his 
generation. This it is which makes readers to-day delve in 
the great mass of his books, his essays and his letters, even 
though they seem to be for the most part formless and un- 
finished. They know that they are in the presence of a 
large, fruitful mind, gifted with great spiritual insight, and 
though they mourn over the irresolute will, rendered irreso- 
lute largely through a physical subjection to an insidious 
drug, they go to his work as the men of his day went to 
Coleridge himself to hear him talk, knowing that from his 
lips they will catch inspiration and new thoughts of God 
and man. 



THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. 

INTRODUCTOKY NOTE. 

In the winter of 1797-1798 the Coleridges were living 
at a little village called Nether Stowey, at the foot of the 
Quantock Hills, about forty miles from Bristol, so as to be 
near Thomas Poole, a rich young tanner who shared Cole- 
ridge's democratic views, and was then, and long after, a 
most liberal friend. In the same neighborhood at Alfoxden 
were then living Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. The 
intercourse between the two families was constant. Words- 
worth and Coleridge took long country walks, and they 
were under the strong, sweet influence of Dorothy Words- 
worth. In November, 1797, the three set off on a little 
tour, intending to meet the expenses of their journey by a 
poem to be composed jointly by the two poets. It is amus- 
ing to note that they started on their journey apparently with 
no engagement, but with full confidence in their ability 
to write the poem, and then to sell it for £5 to the editor 
of the Monthly Magazine. They set out hopefully, but 
after eight miles the scheme broke down, and Wordsworth's 
contribution first and last was confined to half a dozen lines, 
and one or two suggestions. 

When first printed, the poem was introduced by the fol- 
lowing 

ARGUMENT. 

"How a ship having passed the Line, was driven by 
storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole ; and 
how from thence she made her course to the tropical lati- 
tude of the great Pacific Ocean ; and of the strange things 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 263 

that befell ; and in what manner the Ancyent Manner came 
back to his own Country." 

In his Table Talk, Coleridge meets an objection which 
was raised in his day more than it is now, when the poem 
has become established as an English classic. " Mrs. Bar- 
bauld once told me," he says, " that she admired The An- 
cient Mariner very much, but that there were two faults in 
it, — it was improbable, and had no moral. As for the 
probability, I owned that that might admit some question, 
but as to the want of a moral, I told her that in my 
own judgment the poem had too much ; and that the only 
or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion of the 
moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or 
cause of action in a work of such pure imagination. It 
ought to have had no more moral than the Arabian Nights' 
tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by the side 
of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo ! a genie 
starts up, and says he must kill the aforesaid merchant, be- 
cause one of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye 
of the genie's son." 



THE EIME OF THE ANCIENT 
MARINER. 

IN SEVEN PARTS. 

PART I. 

It is an ancient Mariner, An ancient 

And lie stoppeth one of three. meeS three 

"By thy long gray beard and glittering SlTo'lwtd- 

ding-feast, 
^J^i and detaineth 

Now wherefore stopp'st thou me 



? 



one. 



5 " The Bridegroom's doors are opened 
wide, 
And I am next of kin ; 
The guests are met, the feast is set : 
May'st hear the merry din." 

He holds him with his skinny hand ; 
10 " There was a ship," quoth he. 
" Hold off ! unhand me, gray - beard 

loon ! " 
Eftsoons his hand dropt he. 

He holds him with his glittering eye — 
The Wedding-Guest stood still, 
15 And listens like a three years' child : 
The Mariner hath his will. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



265 



The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone : 
He cannot clioose but hear ; 
And thus spake on that ancient man, 
20 The bright-eyed Mariner. 

" The ship was cheered, the harbor 

cleared. 
Merrily did we drop 
Below the kirk, below the hill, 
Below the light-house top. 

25 " The sun came up upon the left, 
Out of the sea came he ! 
And he shone bright, and on the right 
Went down into the sea. 

" Higher and higher every day, 
30 Till over the mast at noon " — 
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, 
For he heard the loud bassoon. 



The Wedding- 
Guest is spell- 
bound by the 
eye of the old 
seafaring man, 
and con- 
strained to 
hear his tale. 



The Mariner 
tells how the 
ship sailed 
southward 
with a good 
wind and fair 
weather, till it 
reached the 
Line. 



The bride hath paced into the hall, 
Red as a rose is she ; 
35 Nodding their heads before her goes 
The merry minstrelsy. 



The Wedding- 
Guest heareth 
the bridal 
music ; but 
the Mariner 
continueth 
his tale. 



The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast. 
Yet he cannot choose but hear ; 
And thus spake on that ancient man, 
40 The bright-eyed Mariner. 

32. Thomas Poole, the friend who induced Cole- 
ridge to take up his residence at Nether Stowey, 
had been improving the church choir, and added 
a bassoon. Poole's biographer suggests that this 
gave Coleridge a hint. 



266 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

" And now the storm-blast came, and he The ship 

drawn by a 

W as tyrannous and strong : storm toward 

TTT -I .ii« 111' • the south pole. 

He struck with his o ertakmg wmgs, 
And chased us south along. 

45 " With sloping masts and dipping prow, 

As who pursued with yell and blow 

Still treads the shadow of his foe. 

And forward bends his head. 

The ship drove fast, loud roared the 
blast, 
50 And southward aye we fled. 

" And now there came both mist and 

snow. 
And it grew wondrous cold : 
And ice, mast-high, came floating by, 
, As green as emerald. 

55 " And through the drifts the snowy clif ts The land of 

_^ , , . ice, and of 

JDid send a dismal sheen : fearful sounds 

wli6rG no liv- 

Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken — ing tiung was 

rrs.1 • n 1 i *o be Been, 

Ihe ice was all between. 

" The ice was here, the ice was there, 
60 The ice was all around : 
It cracked and growled, and roared and 

howled. 
Like noises in a swound ! 

k 1 ITT ATI , Till a great 

" At lenofth did cross an Albatross, sea-wrd, 

^ . called the 

Thorough the losf it came ; Albatross, 

. /^i • • 1 CAvciQ through 

65 As II it had been a Christian soul, the snow-fog, 

T-xr 1 •! 1 • • /-^ n and was re- 

W e hailed it in (jrod s name. ceived with 

great joy and 
hospitality. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 267 

" It ate the food it ne'er had eat, 
And round and round it flew. 
The ice did split with a thunder-fit ; 
70 The helmsman steered us through I 

"And a good south wind sprung up be- Andio! the 

1 • -1 ^ Albatross 

ninCl J proveth a bird 

The Albatross did follow, SnlfouoS 

And every day, for food or play, retumid^^ "^ 

Came to the mariners' hollo ! through fog 



and floating 
ice. 



75 " In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud. 
It perched for vespers nine ; 
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke 

white. 
Glimmered the white moon-shine." 



*' God save thee, ancient Mariner ! The ancient 

80 From the fiends, that plague thee thus ! — iniiospitaWy 

Why look'st thou so ? " — " With my pious Wrd^of 

1 good omen. 

cross-bow 
I shot the Albatross ! " 



PART II. 

" The Sun now rose upon the right : 
Out of the sea came he, 
85 Still hid in mist, and on the left 
Went down into the sea. 

" And the good south wind still blew be- 
hind. 
But no sweet bird did follow, 
Nor any day for food or play 
90 Came to the mariners' hollo ! 



268 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

" And I liad done a hellish thing, His shipmates 

A 1 •, 11 1 ? cry out against 

And it would work em woe : the ancient 

For all averred, I had killed the bird timngthebird 
That made the breeze to blow. ° ^°° 

95 Ah wretch ! said they, the bird to slay, 
That made the breeze to blow ! 



" Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, But when the 

fog cleared off, 

Ihe glorious oun uprist : they justify 

rm n i x i i i mi t i ^ • t the same, and 

Ihen all averred, i had killed the bird thus make 

rr,, lip 1 • • themselves ac- 

100 inat brought the tog and mist. compiicesin 

>m • 1 • 1 ^ 1 1 • 1 *^® crime. 

1 was right, said they, such birds to 

slay, 
That bring the fog and mist. 

" The fair breeze blew, the white foam The fair breeze 

p. continues ; the 

new, ship enters the 

rjy, f. <• n IP Pacific Ocean, 

Ihe lurrow lollowed tree ; andsaiisnorth- 

105 We were the first that ever burst it reaches the 

Into that silent sea. 



" Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt The sWp hath 

, ^ been suddenly 

down, becalmed. 

'T was sad as sad could be ; 
And we did speak only to break 
no The silence of the sea ! 



" All in a hot and copper sky, 
The bloody Sun, at noon, 

104. In the former edition the line was, " The fur- 
row streamed off free," but I had not been long on 
board a ship before I perceived that this was the 
image as seen by a spectator from the shore, or from 
another vessel. From the ship itself the wake appears 
like a brook flowing off from the stern. S. T. C. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



269 



Right up above tlie mast did stand, 
No bigger than the Moon. 

ns " Day after day, day after day, 
We stuck, nor breath nor motion ; 
As idle as a painted ship 
Upon a painted ocean. 

" Water, water, everywhere, 
120 And all the boards did shrink ; 
Water, water, everywhere, 
Nor any drop to drink. 

" The very deep did rot : O Christ ! 
That ever this should be ! 
125 Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs 
Upon the slimy sea. 

" About, about, in reel and rout 
The death-fires danced at night ; 
The water, like a witch's oils, 
130 Burnt green, and blue and white. 

" And some in dreams assured were 
Of the Spirit that plagued us so ; 
Nine fathom deep he had followed us 
From the land of mist and snow. 



135 



through 



utter 



" And every tongue, 

drought, 
Was withered at the root ; 
We could not speak, no more than if 
We had been choked with soot. 



lus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no 
without one or more. 



And the Alba- 
tross begins to 
be avenged. 



A Spirit had 
followed them ; 
one of the in- 
visible inhab- 
itants of this 
planet, neither 
departed souls 
nor angels ; 
concerning 
whom tlie 
learned Jew, 
Josephus, and 
the Platonic 
Constanti- 
nnpolitnn, 
Michael Psel- 
climate or element 



270 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

" All ! well-a-day ! what evil looks 
140 Had I from old and young ! 

Instead of the cross, the Albatross 
About my neck was hung. 

PAKT III. 

" There passed a weary time. Each throat 
Was parched, and glazed each eye. 
145 A weary time ! a weary time ! 
How glazed each weary eye, 
When looking westward, I beheld 
A something in the sky, 

" At first it seemed a little speck, 
150 And then it seemed a mist ; 

It moved and moved, and took at last 
A certain shape, I wist. 

" A speck, a mist, a shape I wist ! 
And still it neared and neared : 
155 As if it dodged a water-sprite, 
It plunged and tacked and veered. 



The shipmates, 
in their sore 
distress, would 
fain throw the 
whole guilt on 
the ancient 
Mariner : in 
sign whereof 
they hang the 
dead sea-bird 
round his 
neck. 



The ancient 
Mariner be- 
holdeth a sign 
in the ele- 
ment afar off. 



" With throats unslaked, with black lips At its nearer 

, , , approach, it 

baKed, seemeth him 

-TUT- in 11 .1 to be a ship ; 

W e COUid nor laugh nor wail ; and at a dear 

Through utter drought all dumb we freethhis 

, , speech from 

stood. I the bonds of 

160 1 bit my arm, I sucked the blood. 
And cried, A sail 1 a sail ! 

" With throats unslaked, with black lips 

baked. 
Agape they heard me call : 



THE ANCIENT MARINER, 271 

Gramercy ! tliey for joy did grin, 
165 And all at once their breath drew in, a flash of 
As they were drinking all. 



joy; 



"See! see! (I cried) she tacks no And horror 

. follows. For 

more ! can it be & ship 

-|-|-. 1 1 I that comes 

Jtlitner to work us weal, — onward with- 

Without a breeze, without a tide, tide? 



170 She steadies with upright keel 



" the western wave was all aflame. 
The day was well nigh done ! 
Almost upon the western wave 
Kested the broad bright Sun ; 
175 When that strange shape drove sud- 
denly 
Betwixt us and the Sun. 



" And straio^ht the Sun was flecked with it seemeth 

_ " him but the 

bars, skeleton of a 



(Heaven's Mother send us grace !) 
As if through a dungeon-grate he peered 
180 With broad and burning face. 

" Alas ! (thought I, and my heart beat 

loud) 
How fast she nears and nears ! 

164. In his TaUe Talk Coleridge says : " I took 
the thought of ' grinning for joy ' from my compan- 
ion's [a college friend] remark to me, when we had 
climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and were nearly 
dead with thirst. We could not speak from the 
constriction, till we found a little puddle under a 
stone. He said to me : * You grinned like an idiot.' 
He had done the same." 



ship. 



272 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

Are those her sails that glance m the 

Sun, 
Like restless gossameres ? 



185 " Are those her ribs through which 
Sun 
Did peer, as through a grate ? 
And is that Woman all her crew ? 
Is that a Death ? and are there two ? 
Is Death that woman's mate ? 



the And its ribs are 
Been as bars on 
the face of the 
setting Sun. 
The Spectre- 
Woman and 
her Death- 
mate, and no 
other on board 
the skeleton- 
Bhip. 



190 " Her lips were red, her looks were 
free. 
Her locks were yellow as gold : 
Her skin was as white as leprosy. 
The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she, 
Who thicks man's blood with cold. 



Like vessel, 
like crew ! 



195 " The naked hulk alongside came. 
And the twain were casting dice ; 
' The game is done ! I 've won ! 

won ! ' 
Quoth she, and whistles thrice. 



Death and 
Life-in-Death 
have diced for 
the ship's 
I 've crew, and she 
(the latter) 
winneth the 
ancient 
Mariner. 



*' The Sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out : no twilight 

. , , 1 1 T 1 within the 

200 At one stride comes tne dark ; courts of the 

With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea. 
Off shot the spectre-bark. 



205 



" We listened and looked sideways up ! 
Fear at my heart, as at a cup. 
My life-blood seemed to sip ! 
The stars were dim, and thick the night. 
The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed 
white : 



At the rising 
of the Moon, 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 273 

From the sails the dew did drip — 
Till clomb above the eastern bar 
210 The horned Moon, with one bright star 
Within the nether tip. 

"One after one, by the star-dogged One after 

.. g. another, 

Moon, 
Too quick for groan or sigh. 
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, 
215 And cursed me with his eye. 

"Four times fifty living men, His shipmatea 

(And I heard nor sigh nor groan) dead. 

With heavy thump, a lifeless lump. 
They dropped down one by one. 

220 " The souls did from their bodies fly, — But Life-in- 
They fled to bliss or woe ! heTworK^ 

i -I 1 • J 1 1 the ancient 

And every soul, it passed me by, Mariner. 

Like the whizz of my cross-bow ! " 



PART lY. 

" I FEAR thee, ancient Mariner ! TheWedding- 

Ic .1 1 • 1 It Guest feareth 

tear thy skinny hand I that a Spirit is 

And thou art long, and lank, and brown, 

As is the ribbed sea-sand. 

210. It is a common superstition among sailors 
that something evil is about to happen whenever a 
star dogs the moon. S. T. C. 

But no sailor ever saw a star within the nether 
tip of a horned moon. J. Dykes Campbell. 

227. For the last two lines of this stanza, I am 
indebted to Mr. Wordsworth. S. T. C. 



talking to him. 



274 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 



*' I fear thee and thy glittering eye, 
And tliy skinny hand, so brown." — 



230 



" Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding- But the an- 
cient Mariner 



Guest ! 
This body dropt not down, 

" Alone, alone, all, all alone. 
Alone on a wide, wide sea ! 
And never a saint took pity on 
235 My soul in agony. 

" The many men, so beautiful ! 
And they all dead did lie : 
And a thousand thousand slimy things 
Lived on ; and so did I. 

240 " I looked upon the rotting sea, 
And drew my eyes away ; 
I looked upon the rotting deck. 
And there the dead men lay. 

" I looked to heaven, and tried to pray ; 
245 But or ever a prayer had gusht, 
A wicked whisper came, and made 
My heart as dry as dust. 

" I closed my lids, and kept them close. 
And the balls like pulses beat ; 
250 For the sky and the sea, and the sea 
and the sky 
Lay like a load on my weary eye. 
And the dead were at my feet. 



assureth him 
of his bodily 
life, and pro- 
ceedeth to re- 
late his horri- 
ble penance. 



He despiseth 
the creatures 
of the calm. 



And envieth 
that they 
should live, 
and so many 
lie dead. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 
sweat melted from 



" The cold 

limbs, 
Nor rot nor reek did they : 
25.5 The look with which they looked on 

me 
Had never passed away. 

" An orphan's curse would drag to hell 
A spirit from on high ; 
But oh ! more horrible than that 
260 Is a curse in a dead man's eye ! 

Seven days, seven nights, I saw that 

curse, 
And yet I could not die. 

" The moving Moon went up the sky, 
And nowhere did abide : 
265 Softly she was going up. 
And a star or two beside — 

" Her beams bemocked the sultry main, 
Like April hoar-frost spread ; 
But where the ship's huge shadow lay, 
270 The charmed water burnt alway 
A still and awful red. 

" Beyond the shadow of the ship, 
I watched the water-snakes : 
They moved in tracks of shining white, 
275 And when they reared, the elfish light 
Fell off in hoary flakes. 

" Within the shadow of the ship 

I watched their rich attire : 

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black. 



275 

their But the curse 
livetli for liim 
in the eye of 
the dead men. 



In his loneli- 
ness and fixed- 
ness he yearn- 
eth towards 
the journey- 
ing Moon, and 
the stars that 
still sojourn, 
yet still move 
onward ; and 
everjrwhere 
the blue sky be- 
longs to them, 
and is their ap- 
pointed rest, 
and their na- 
tive country 
and their own 
natural homes, 
which they 
enter unan- 
nounced, as 
lords that are 
certainly ex- 
pected, and j'et 
there is a silent 
joy at their 
arrival. 



By the light of 
the ]Moon he 
beholdeth 
God's crea- 
tures of the 
great calm. 



276 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 



280 They coiled and swam ; and every track 
Was a flash of golden fire. 

" O happy living things ! no tongue 
Their beauty might declare : 
A spring of love gushed from my heart, 
285 And I blessed them unaware ; 

Sure my kind saint took pity on me, 
And I blessed them unaware. 



Their beauty 
and their hap- 
piness. 



He blesseth 
them in his 
heart. 



" The selfsame moment I could pray ; 
And from my neck so free 
290 The Albatross fell off, and sank 
Like lead into the sea." 



The spell be- 
gins to break. 



PART V. 

" Oh sleep ! it is a gentle thing, 
Beloved from pole to pole ! 
To Mary Queen the praise be given! 
295 She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, 
That slid into my soul. 

" The silly buckets on the deck. 
That had so long remained, 
I dreamt that they were filled with dew ; 
300 And when I awoke, it rained. 

" My lips were wet, my throat was cold 
My garments all were dank ; 
Sure I had drunken in my dreams, 
And still my body drank. 



By grace of 
the holy 
Mother, the 
ancient Mari- 
> ner is re- 
freshed with 
rain. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



211 



305 " I moved, and could not feel 
limbs : 
I was so liglit — almost 
I tliouglit that I liad died in sleep, 
And was a blessed ghost. 



my 



" And soon I heard a roaring wind : 
310 It did not come anear ; 

But with its sound it shook the sails, 
That were so thin and sere. 



He heareth 
sounds and 
seeth strange 
sights and 
commotions in 
the sky and 
the elements. 



" The upper air burst into life ! 
And a hundred fire-flags sheen, 
315 To and fro they were hurried about ! 
And to and fro, and in and out. 
The wan stars danced between. 

"And the coming wind did roar more 

loud, 
And the sails did sigh like sedge ; 
320 And the rain poured down from one 

black cloud ; 
The moon was at its edge. 

" The thick black cloud was cleft, and still 
The moon was at its side : 
Like waters shot from some high crag, 
325 The lightning fell with never a jag, 
A river steep and wide. 



" The loud wind never reached the ship, The bodies of 

. tlie ship's crew 



Yet now the ship moved on 
Beneath the lightning and the Moon 
330 The dead men gave a groan. 



are inspired, 
and the ship 
moves on. 



278 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

" They groaned, they stirred, they all 

u]3rose. 
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes ; 
It had been strange, even in a dream, 
To have seen those dead men rise. 



335 



The helmsman steered, the ship moved 



on 



Yet never a breeze up blew ; 
The mariners all 'gan work the ropes, 
Where they were wont to do ; 
They raised their limbs like lifeless 
tools — 
340 We were a ghastly crew. 

" The body of my brother's son 
Stood by me, knee to knee : 
The body and I pulled at one rope, 
But he said nought to me." 



345 " I fear thee, ancient Mariner ! " 
" Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest ! 
'T was not those souls that fled 

pain, 
Which to their corses came again. 
But a troop of spirits blest : 



But not by the 
souls of the 
men, nor by 
. demons of 
m earth or mid- 
dle air, but by 
a blessed troop 
of angelic spir- 
its, sent down 
by the invoca- 
tion of the 
guardian saint. 



350 " For when it dawned — they dropped 

their arms, 
And clustered round the mast ; 
Sweet sounds rose slowly through their 

mouths, 
And from their bodies passed. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



279 



" Around, around, flew each sweet sound, 
355 Then darted to the Sun ; 

Slowly the sounds came back again, 
Now mixed, now one by one. 

" Sometimes a-dropping from the sky 
I heard the skylark sing ; 
360 Sometimes all little birds that are, 
How they seemed to fill the sea and air 
With their sweet jargoning ! 

" And now 't was like all instruments, 
Now like a lonely flute ; 
365 And now it is an angel's song. 
That makes the heavens be mute. 

" It ceased ; yet still the sails made on 
A pleasant noise till noon, 
A noise like of a hidden brook 
370 In the leafy month of June, 

That to the sleeping woods all night 
Singeth a quiet tune. 

" Till noon we quietly sailed on. 
Yet never a breeze did breathe : 
375 Slowly and smoothly went the ship, 
Moved onward from beneath. 



" Under the keel nine fathom deep, 
From the land of mist and snow, 
The Spirit slid : and it was he 
380 That made the ship to go. 

The sails at noon left off their tune. 
And the ship stood still also. 



The lonesome 
Spirit from tlie 
south-pole car- 
ries on the 
ship as far as 
the Line, in 
obedience to 
the angelic 
troop, but still 
requireth ven- 
geance. 



280 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

" The Sun, right up above the mast, 
Had fixed her to the ocean : 
385 But in a minute she 'gan stir, 
With a short uneasy motion — 
Backwards and forwards half her 

length 
With a short uneasy motion. 

" Then like a pawing horse let go, 
390 She made a sudden bound : 
It flung the blood into my head, 
And I fell down in a s wound. 



" How long in that same fit I lay, 
I have not to declare ; 
395 But ere my living life returned, 
I heard, and in my soul discerned. 
Two voices in the air. 



"'Is it he? 
man? 



quoth one, 'Is this the 



By him who died on cross, 
400 With his cruel bow he laid full low 
The harmless Albatross. 



The Polar 
Spirit's fellow 
demons, the 
invisible in- 
habitants of 
the element, 
take part in 
his wrong ; and 
two of thgm 
relate, one to 
the other, that 
penance long 
and heavy for 
the ancient 
Mariner hath 
been accorded 
to the Polar 
Spirit, who 
returneth 
southward. 



" ' The Spirit who bideth by himself 
In the land of mist and snow. 
He loved the bird that loved the man 
405 Who shot him with his, bow.' 



" The other was a softer voice. 

As soft as honey-dew : 

Quoth he, ' The man hath penance done, 

And penance more will do.' " 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



281 



PAKT VI. 



FIRST VOICE. 



410 " ' But tell me, tell me ! speak again, 
Thy soft response renewing — 
What makes that ship drive on so fast ? 
What is the ocean doing ? ' 



SECOND VOICE. 



" ' Still as a slave before his lord, 
415 The ocean hath no blast ; 

His great bright eye most silently 
Up to the Moon is cast — 

" ' If he may know which way to go ; 
For she guides him smooth or grim. 
420 See, brother, see ! how graciously 
She looketh down on him.' 



FIRST VOICE. 



" ' But why drives on that ship so fast, 
Without or wave or wind ? ' 



SECOND VOICE. 



" ' The air is cut away before, 
425 And closes from behind.' 



The Mariner 
hath been cast 
into a trance ; 
for the atagelic 
power causeth 
the vessel to 
drive north- 
ward faster 
than human 
life could 
endure. 



" ' Fly, brother, fly ! more high, more 

high ! 
Or we shall be belated : 
For slow and slow that ship will go, 
When the Mariner's trance is abated.' 



282 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

430 " I woke, and we were sailinaj on The super- 

, ° natural motion 

As m a gentle weather : is retarded ; 

. , the Mariner 

T was ni^ntj calm ni^nt. the moon was awakes, and 

*-' ^ his penance 

hlS'h ; begins anew. 

The dead men stood together. 

" All stood together on the deck, 
435 For a charnel-dungeon fitter ; 
All fixed on me their stony eyes, 
That in the Moon did glitter. 

" The pang, the curse, with which they 

died, 
Had never passed away : 
440 1 could not draw my eyes from theirs. 
Nor turn them up to pray. 

"And now this spell was snapt: once The curse is 

finally ex- 
more plated. 

I viewed the ocean green. 
And looked far forth, yet little saw 
445 Of what had else been seen — 



" Like one, that on a lonesome road 
Doth walk in fear and dread. 
And having once turned round, walks on, 
And turns no more his head ; 
450 Because he knows, a frightful fiend 
Doth close behind him tread. 

*' But soon there breathed a wind on me, 
Nor sound nor motion made : 
Its path was not upon the sea, 
455 In ripple or in shade. 



THE ANCIENT MARINEUr 288 

*' It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek 
Like a meadow-gale of spring — 
It mingled strangely with my fears, 
Yet it felt like a welcoming. 

460 " Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, 
Yet she sailed softly too : 
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze — 
On me alone it blew. 



" Oh ! dream of ioy ! is this indeed And the an- 

^ "^ cient Mariner 

465 1 he light-house top I see : behoideth ms 

X 1*1 i'no*i» 1 i«io native comk 

is this the hiii r is this the kirk ; txj. 
Is this mine own countree ? 



" We drifted o'er the harbor-bar, 
And I with sobs did pray — 
470 O let me be awake, my God I 
Or let me sleep alway. 

" The harbor-bay was clear as glass, 
So smoothly it was strewn ! 
And on the bay the moonlight lay, 
475 And the shadow of the Moon. 

" The rock shone bright, the kirk no less, 
That stands above the rock : 
The moonlight steeped in silentness 
The steady weathercock. 

480 " And the bay was white with silent light 
Till, rising from the same, 

._, , , The angelic 

Jb all many shapes, that shadows were, spirits leave 

-^ . , the dead 

In crimson colors came. bodies. 



284 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

" A little distance from tlie prow 
485 Those crimson shadows were : 
I turned my eyes upon the deck — 
Oh, Christ ! what saw I there ! 

" Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, 
And, by the holy rood ! 
490 A man all light, a seraph-man, And appear in 

On every corse there stood. forms of light. 

" This seraph-band, each waved his hand : 
It was a heavenly sight ! 
They stood as signals to the land, 
495 Each one a lovely light ; 

" This seraph-band, each waved his hand, 
No voice did they impart — 
No voice ; but oh ! the silence sank 
Like music on my heart. 

500 " But soon I heard the dash of oars, 
I heard the Pilot's cheer ; 
My head was turned perforce away. 
And I saw a boat appear. 

" The Pilot and the Pilot's boy, 
505 1 heard them coming fast : 

Dear Lord in Heaven ! it was a joy 
The dead men could not blast. 

" I saw a third — I heard his voice : 
It is the Hermit good ! 
510 He singeth loud his godly hymns 
That he makes in the wood. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 285 

He '11 shrieve my soul, lie '11 wash away 
The Albatross's blood. 



PART VII. 

" This Hermit good lives in that wood The Hermit of 
515 Which slopes down to the sea. 

How loudly his sweet voice he rears ! 
He loves to talk with marineres 
That come from a far countree. 

" He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve — 
520 He hath a cushion plump : 
It is the moss that wholly hides 
The rotted old oak-stump. 

" The skiff-boat neared : I heard them 

talk, 
' Why, this is strange, I trow ! 
525 Where are those lights so many and fair, 
That signal made but now ? ' 

" ' Strange, by my faith ! ' the Hermit Approacheth 

. -J the ship with 

said. wonder. 

' And they answered not our cheer ! 
The planks looked warped ! and see those 
sails, 
530 How thin they are and sere ! 
I never saw aught like to them. 
Unless perchance it were 

'' ' Brown skeletons of leaves that lag 
My forest-brook along ; 



286 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERLDGE. 

535 AYhen the ivy-tod is heavy with snow. 
And the owlet whoops to the wolf be- 
low, 
That eats the she-wolf's young.' 

" ' Dear Lord ! it hath a fiendish 

look — 
(The Pilot made reply) 
540 1 am a-feared ' — ' Push on, push on ! ' 
Said the Hermit cheerily. 

" The boat came closer to the ship, 
But I nor spake nor stirred ; 
The boat came close beneath the ship, 
545 And straight a sound was heard. 

" Under the water it rumbled on, The ship sud- 

Still louder and more dread : e y am e . 

It reached the ship, it split the bay ; 
The ship went down like lead. 

550 " Stunned by that loud and dreadful The ancient 

•^ Mariner is 

sound, saved in the 

' Pilot's boat. 

Which sky and ocean smote. 

Like one that hath been seven days 

drowned 
My body lay afloat ; 
But swift as dreams, myself I found 
555 Within the Pilot's boat. 

" Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, 
The boat spun round and round ; 
And all was still, save that the hill 
Was telling of the sound. 



I 




THE ANCIENT MARINER. 287 

560 " I moved my lips — the Pilot shrieked 
And fell down in a fit ; 
The holy Hermit raised his eyes, 
And prayed where he did sit. 

" I took the oars : the Pilot's boy, 
565 Who now doth crazy go. 

Laughed loud and long, and all the 

while 
His eyes went to and fro. 
' Ha ! ha ! ' quoth he, ' full plain I see, 
The Devil knows how to row.' 

570 " And now, all in my own countree, 
I stood on the firm land ! 
The Hermit stej)ped forth from the 

boat. 
And scarcely he could stand. 



" ' O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man ! ' The ancient 

rpi TT 'i. 11*1 Mariner ear- 

575 ihe Xiermit crossed his brow. nestly entreat- 

,o •!? J.11 tTi'Txi eth the Hermit 

' bay quick, quoth he, ' 1 bid thee say — to shrieve 
What manner of man art thou ? ' pSnce of mq 

falls on him. 

"Forthwith this frame of mine was 

wrenched 
With a wof ul agony, 
580 Which forced me to begin my tale ; 
And then it left me free. 



" Since then, at an uncertain hour, And ever and 

r^\^ , , anon through- 

ihat agony returns : out Ms future 

And till my ghastly tale is told, constratSif 

nn • 1 . 'j.! • 1 him to travel 

585 ihis heart within me burns. from land to 

land. 



288 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

*' I pass, like night, from land to land ; 
I have strange power of speech ; 
That moment that his face I see, 
I know the man that must hear me : 
590 To him my tale I teach. 

"What loud uproar bursts from that 

door 1 
The wedding-guests are there : 
But in the garden-bower the bride 
And bride-maids singing are : 
595 And hark the little vesper bell, 
Which biddeth me to prayer ! 

" O Wedding-Guest ! this soul hath been 
Alone on a wide, wide sea : 
So lonely 't was, that God himself 
600 Scarce seemed there to be. 



" Oh sweeter than the marriage-feast, 
'T is sweeter far to me. 
To walk together to the kirk 
With a goodly company ! — 

605 " To walk together to the kirk. 
And all together pray, 
While each to his great Father bends. 
Old men, and babes, and loving friends, 
And youths and maidens gay ! 

610 " Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell 
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest ! 
He prayeth well, who loveth well 
Both man and bird and beast. 



And to teach 
by his own 
example love 
and reverence 
to all things 
that God made 
and loveth. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 289 

" He prayeth best, who lovetli best 
615 All things both great and small ; 
For the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all." 

The Mariner, whose eye is bright, 
Whose beard with age is hoar, 
620 Is gone : and now the Wedding-Guest 
Turned from the bridegroom's door. 

He went like one that hath been stunned, 
And is of sense forlorn : 
A sadder and a wiser man, 
625 He rose the morrow morn. 



KUBLA KHAN ; OR, A VISION IN A DREAM. 

A FRAGMENT. 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
A stately pleasure-dome decree : 
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
Through caverns measureless to man 

5 Down to a sunless sea. 

So twice five miles of fertile ground 
With walls and towers were girdled round : 
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, 
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ; 

10 And here were forests ancient as the hills, 
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. 
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted 
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover ! 
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted 

15 As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted 
By woman wailing for her demon-lover ! 
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seeth- 
ing, 
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, 
A mighty fountain momently was forced ; 

20 Amid whose swift half -intermitted burst 
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, 
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail : 
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever 
It flung up momently the sacred river. 

25 Five miles meandering with a mazy motion 



i 
I 



KUBLA KHAN. 291 

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, 
Then reached the caverns measureless to man, 
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean : 
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far 
30 Ancestral voices prophesying war ! 

The shadow of the dome of pleasure 

Floated midway on the waves ; 

Where was heard the mingled measure 

From the fountain and the caves. 
35 It was a miracle of rare device, 

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice ! 

A damsel with a dulcimer 

In a vision once I saw : 

It was an Abyssinian maid, 
40 And on her dulcimer she played, 

Sing of Mount Abora, 

Could I revive within me, 

Her symphony and song, 

To such a deep delight 't would win me, 
45 That with music loud and long, 

I would build that dome in air, 

That sunny dome I those caves of ice ! 

And all who heard should see them there, 

And all should cry, Beware ! Beware ! 
60 His flashing eyes, his floating hair ! 

Weave a circle round him thrice, 

And close your eyes with holy dread, 

For he on honey-dew hath fed, 

And drunk the milk of Paradise. 



LORD BYRON. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born in London Jan- 
uary 22, 1788. He was not in the direct line of the peerage, 
and when his father died in 1791, he was a poor boy, left 
in the care of a mother who was incompetent to give him a 
judicious training. When, by a succession of deaths in the 
family, he came at ten years of age into possession of a title 
and of the family estate of Newstead Abbey, he was already 
warped in mind as he was somewhat deformed in body, be- 
ing lame from a club-foot. He had his schooling at Harrow, 
where he was known as a shy, somewhat ungovernable, pas- 
sionate boy, who formed ardent attachments and took a 
fierce delight in such sport as he could engage in. It was 
said that he chose the most ferocious animals for his pets, 
and he was violent in his expressions. He had, indeed, a 
large, rich nature, which seemed constantly to be coming 
under unhappy influences, and from an early day he had a 
way of hiding his best emotions ui^der a show of indiffer- 
ence and swagger, so that what was at first a kind of mask 
became in the end almost his familiar countenance. 

He passed from Harrow to Trinity College, Cambridge. 
Both at school and in college he found an outlet for his 
moods in verse ; this was called out by the attachments he 
formed and by special occasions, for he always seemed to 
be swayed by emotions which circumstance or adventure 
brought to the surface. He published a collection of these 



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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 293 

poems when he was nineteen, under the title The Hours of 
Idleness., and the Edinburgh Review, which was casting 
about for something to bully, fell upon the book with great 
scorn. Byron retorted with a savage piece of sarcasm, 
called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers^ which made 
him better known than his original volume. He took his 
seat in the House of Lords, but though he had a genius 
for declamatory speech, he had little interest in the details 
of government, and he found, moreover, or made, very few 
friends, so that very shortly he left England with his friend 
Hobhouse, and spent two years of travel in Spain, Portugal, 
Greece, and Turkey. 

On his return, he found himself in a very embarrassed 
condition as regards his property ; his mother died, and 
some of his nearest friends, and he was left much alone to 
the increase of his morbid temper. But during his absence 
he had begun a poem which, almost in the form of a journal 
in verse, contained the copious discharge of his poetic feel- 
ings, which was now rich in emotion, now satiric and sple- 
netic. This poem was Childe Harold, of which he at first 
published but two cantos. In speaking of the effect of its 
publication, he wrote : " I awoke one morning and found 
myself famous." His position was at once changed ; frcrni 
being neglected and solitary, he became the idol of society. 
In succession, during the two or three years that followed, 
appeared The Giaour, The Bride of Ahydos, The Corsair, 
and Hebrew Melodies, and Byron's position was that of a 
very popular poet. 

He married, January 2, 1815, Miss Milbanke, a beautiful 
girl, who won his great admiration and whom he had ar- 
dently pursued, but whose temperament was precisely the 
one most ill adapted to master his ungovernable nature. 
They had one child, Augusta Ada, but little more than a 
year elapsed after they were married before Lady Byron 
returned to her father's house and Lord Byron signed a 
deed of separation. 



294 LORD BYRON. 

He made some show in print of his domestic affairs, and 
the world in which he lived took up the quarrel, for the 
most part pronouncing against him. In consequence Lord 
Byron left England in the spring of 1816, never to return. 
For the next seven years he lived in Switzerland and Italy, 
and in this period wrote his most notable poetry, more of 
Childe Harold, The Prisoner of Chillon^ The Dream, 
Mazeppa, Don Juan. He was intimate with Shelley, he 
was most generous to Leigh Hunt, and he became involved 
in certain revolutionary movements in Italy. His life was 
in a manner lawless, as if he had cast away all restraint, 
but his restless spirit broke forth into impassioned verse, and 
he wrote poems which flow like rushing turbulent streams 
through the placid meadows of contemporaneous English 
literature. 

In April, 1823, he began a correspondence with the men 
who in Greece were attempting the overthrow of Turkish 
rule, and in July he resolved to throw himself and his for- 
tune into the cause. Accordingly with some friends, some 
supplies, and some arms, he left Italy for Greece, and 
though he was somewhat disappointed in the character of 
his new compatriots, he was steadfast in his enthusiasm. 
He received an appointment as commander of an expedi- 
tion against Lepanto, and showed both bravery and high 
wisdom in the conduct of the expedition ; it failed, but he 
turned his attention to the fortification of Missolonghi. In 
the midst of his labors, he was taken ill, and after a short 
sickness, he died April 19, 1824. Public honors were paid 
to his memory in Greece, and his body was carried back to 
England to be buried in the family vault near Newstead. 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 

A FABLE. 

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

The words " a fable " which Byron added to the title of this 
poem should put one on his guard against taking the poem as an 
historical narrative, or treating it in its parts as true to the lit- 
eral facts of Bonnivard's experience. Byron wrote the poem in 
June, 1816, at a small inn, in the little village of Ouchy, near 
Lausanne on the shores of Lake Geneva, where he happened to 
be detained a couple of days by stress of weather. In a notice 
prefixed to the poem he wrote : " When this poem was com- 
posed, I was not sufficiently aware of the history of Bonnivard, 
or I should have endeavored to dignify the subject by an attempt 
to celebrate his courage and his virtues." As it was he had 
been stirred by the tradition of the patriot's confinement in the 
castle which he had just visited, and with his ardent passion for 
political liberty which found expression later in Italy and in 
Greece, he used the incident for an impassioned poetic mono- 
logue. 

The tourist to-day who visits the castle of Chillon finds abun- 
dant historical information respecting the castle and the confine- 
ment of Bonnivard. Byron's poem has lifted the place into 
great distinction. The castle sta,nds on a rock in the lake, not 
■far from Montreux, and is approached by a bridge. In the inte- 
rior is a range of dungeons. Eight pillars are shown, one of 
which is half built into the wall. The prisoners, who were some- 
times reformers, sometimes prisoners of state, were fettered to 
the pillars, and the pavement is worn with the footsteps of their 
brief pace. Francis Bonnivard was born in 1496. He was of 
gentle birth and inherited a rich priory near Geneva. When the 
Duke of Savoy attacked the republic of Geneva, Bonnivard 
joined in the defence, and became thus the enemy of the Duke. 
Subsequently, when in the service of the republic, he fell into 
the power of the Duke, who imprisoned him for six years in the 
castle of Chillon. He was released by the Genevese in 1536, 
and led a stormy existence until his death in 1571. 



296 LORD BYRON. 

I. 

My hair is gray, but not with years. 
Nor grew it white 
In a single night, 

As men's have grown from sudden fears. 
5 My limbs are bowed, though not with toil, 
But rusted with a vile repose, 

For they have been a dungeon's spoil, 
And mine has been the fate of those 

To whom the goodly earth and air 
10 Are banned, and barred — forbidden fare ; 

But this was for my father's faith 

I suffered chains and courted death ; 

That father perished at the stake 

For tenets he would not forsake ; 
15 And for the same his lineal race 

In darkness found a dwelling-place ; 

We were seven — who now are one, 
Six in youth, and one in age. 

Finished as they had begun, 
20 Proud of Persecution's rage ; 

One in fire, and two in field. 

Their belief with blood have sealed : 

Dying as their father died. 

For the God their foes denied ; — 
25 Three were in a dungeon cast. 

Of whom this wreck is left the last. 

II. 

There are seven pillars of Gothic mould, 
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old. 
There are seven columns massy and gray, 
30 Dim with a dull imprisoned ray, 



I 

I 



I 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 297 

A sunbeam whicli hath lost its way, 
And through the crevice and the cleft 
Of the thick wall is fallen and left : 
Creeping o'er the floor so damp, 

35 Like a marsh's meteor lamp : 
And in each pillar there is a ring. 

And in each ring there is a chain ; 
That iron is a cankering thing, 

For in these limbs its teeth remain, 

40 With marks that will not wear away, 
Till I have done with this new day. 
Which now is painful to these eyes. 
Which have not seen the sun so rise 
For years — I cannot count them o'er, 

45 1 lost their long and heavy score 
When my last brother drooped and died. 
And I lay living by his side. 

III. 

They chained us each to a column stone. 

And we were three — yet, each alone ; 
50 We could not move a single pace. 

We could not see each other's face. 

But with that pale and livid light 

That made us strangers in our sight : 

And thus together — yet apart, 
55 Fettered in hand, but joined in heart ; 

'T was still some solace, in the dearth 

Of the pure elements of earth, 

To hearken to each other's speech, 

And each turn comforter to each 

31. One of the impressive sights in the dungeon now, as it was 
in Byron's day, is the beams of the setting sun streaming through 
the narrow loopholes into the gloomy recesses. 



298 LORD BYRON. 

60 With some new hope or legend old, 
Or song heroically bold ; 
But even these at length grew cold. 
Our voices took a dreary tone, 
An echo of the dungeon stone, 
65 A grating sound — not full and free 
As they of yore were wont to be ; 
It might be fancy — but to me 
They never sounded like our own. 

IV. 

I was the eldest of the three, 
70 And to uphold and cheer the rest 
I ought to do — and did my best — 
And each did well in his degree. 

The youngest, whom my father loved. 
Because our mother's brow was given 
75 To him — with eyes as blue as heaven. 
For him my soul was sorely moved : 
And truly might it be distressed 
To see such bird in such a nest ; 
For he was beautiful as day — 
80 (When day was beautiful to me 
As to young eagles being free) — 
A polar day, which will not see 
A sunset till its summer 's gone, 
Its sleepless summer of long light, 
85 The snow-clad offspring of the sun : 
And thus he was as pure and bright. 
And in his natural spirit gay, 
With tears for naught but others' ills. 
And then they flowed like mountain rills, 
90 Unless he could assuage the woe 
Which he abhorred to view below. 



I 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 299 

T. 

The other was as pure of mind, 

But formed to combat with his kind ; 

Strong in his frame, and of a mood 
95 Which 'gainst the world in war had stood, 

And perished in the foremost rank 

With joy : — but not in chains to pine : 

His spirit withered with their clank, 
I saw it silently decline — 
100 And so perchance in sooth did mine : 

But yet I forced it on to cheer 

Those relics of a home so dear. 

He was a hunter of the hills, 

Had followed there the deer and woK ; 
105 To him this dungeon was a gulf, 

And fettered feet the worst of ills« 

VI. 

Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls, 

A thousand feet in depth below 

Its massy waters meet and flow ; 
110 Thus much the fathom-line was sent 

From Chillon's snow-white battlement. 
Which round about the wave inthrals : 

A double dungeon wall and wave 

Have made — and like a living grave. 
115 Below the surface of the lake 

The dark vault lies wherein we lay. 

We heard it ripple night and day ; 
Sounding o'er our heads it knocked 

And I have felt the winter's spray 
120 Wash through the bars when winds were high 
107. Lake Leman is another name for Lake Geneva. 



300 LORD BYRON. 

And wanton in the happy sky ; 

And then the very rock hath rocked, 
And I have felt it shake, unshocked, 

Because I coukl have smiled to see 
125 The death that would have set me free. 

VII. 

I said my nearer brother pined, 
I said his mighty heart declined, 
He loathed and put away his food ; 
It was not that 't was coarse and rude, 

130 For we were used to hunter's fare. 
And for the like had little care : 
The milk drawn from the mountain goat 
Was changed for water from the moat. 
Our bread was such as captive's tears 

135 Have moistened many a thousand years, 
Since man first pent his fellow men 
Like brutes within an iron den ; 
But what were these to us or him ? 
These wasted not his heart or limb ; 

140 My brother's soul was of that mould 
Which in a palace had grown cold, 
Had his free breathing been denied 
The range of the steep mountain's side ; 
But why delay the truth ? — he died. 

145 1 saw, and could not hold his head. 

Nor reach his dying hand — nor dead, — 
Though hard I strove, but strove in vain, 
To rend and gnash my bonds in twain. 
He died, and they unlocked his chain, 

150 And scooped for him a shallow grave 
Even from the cold earth of our cave. 
I begged them, as a boon, to lay 



I 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 301 

His corse in dust whereon the day 

Might shine — it was a foolish thought, 
155 But then within my brain it wrought, 

That even in death his freeborn breast 

In such a dungeon could not rest. 

I might have spared my idle prayer — 

They coldly laughed — and laid him there : 
160 The flat and turfless earth above 

The being we so much did love ; 

His empty chain above it leant, 

Such murder's fitting monument ! 

VIII. 

But he, the favorite and the flower, 
165 Most cherished since his natal hour, 

His mother's image in fair face. 

The infant love of all his race. 

His martyred father's dearest thought. 

My latest care, for whom I sought 
170 To hoard my life, that his might be 

Less wretched now, and one day free ; 

He, too, who yet had held untired 

A spirit natural or inspired — 

He, too, was struck, and day by day 
175 Was withered on the stalk away. 

Oh, God ! it is a fearful thing 

To see the human soul take wing 

In any shape, in any mood : — 

I 've seen it rushing forth in blood, 
180 1 've seen it on the breaking ocean 

Strive with a swoln convulsive motion, 

I 've seen the sick and ghastly bed 

Of Sin delirious with its dread : 

But these were horrors — this was woe 



302 LORD BYRON. 

185 Unmixed with sucli — but sure and slow 
He faded, and so calm and meek, 
So softly worn, so sweetly weak, 
So tearless, yet so tender — kind. 
And grieved for those he left behind ; 

190 With all the while a cheek whose bloom 
Was as a mockery of the tomb. 
Whose tints as gently sunk away 
As a departing rainbow's ray — 
An eye of most transparent light, 

195 That almost made the dungeon bright, 
And not a word of murmur — not 
A groan o'er his untimely lot, — 
A little talk of better days, 
A little hope my own to raise, 

200 For I was sunk in silence — lost 
In this last loss, of all the most ; 
And then the sighs he would suppress 
Of fainting nature's feebleness. 
More slowly drawn, grew less and less : 

205 1 listened, but I could not hear — 
I called, for I was wild with fear ; 
I knew 't was hopeless, but my dread 
Would not be thus admonished ; 
I called, and thought I heard a sound — 

210 1 burst my chain with one strong bound. 
And rushed to him : — I found him not, 
/ only stirred in this black spot, 
I only lived — / only drew 
The accursed breath of dungeon-dew ; 

215 The last — the sole — the dearest link 
Between me and the eternal brink. 
Which bound me to my failing race. 
Was broken in this fatal place. 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 303 

One on the earth, and one beneath — 
220 My brothers — both had ceased to breathe ; 

I took that hand which lay so still, 

Alas ! my own was full as chill ; 

I had not strength to stir, or strive, 

But felt that I was still alive — 
225 A frantic feeling, when we know 

That what we love shall ne'er be so. 
I know not why 
I could not die, 

I had no earthly hope — but faith, 
230 And that forbade a selfish death. 

IX. 

What next befell me then and there 
I know not well — I never knew — 

First came the loss of light, and air, 
And then of darkness too : 
235 1 had no thought, no feeling — none — 

Among the stones I stood a stone. 

And was, scarce conscious what I wist, 

As shrubless crags within the mist ; 

For all was blank, and bleak, and gray, 
240 It was not night — it was not day, 

It was not even the dungeon-light. 

So hateful to my heavy sight. 

But vacancy absorbing space. 

And fixedness — without a place ; 
245 There were no stars — no earth — no time — 

No check — no change — no good — no crime — 

But silence, and a stirless breath 

Which neither was of life nor death ; 

A sea of stagnant idleness, 
250 Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless ! 



304 LORD BYRON, 

X. 

A light broke in upon my brain, — 
It was the carol of a bird ; 

It ceased, and then it came again. 
The sweetest song ear ever heard, 
255 And mine was thankful till my eyes 

Ran over with the glad surprise. 

And they that moment could not see 

I was the mate of misery ; 

But then by dull degrees came back 
260 My senses to their wonted track, 

I saw the dungeon walls and floor 

Close slowly round me as before, 

I saw the glimmer of the sun 

Cree23ing as it before had done, 
265 But through the crevice where it came 

That bird was perched, as fond and tame, 
And tamer than upon the tree ; 

A lovely bird, with azure wings. 

And song that said a thousand things, 
270 And seemed to say them all for me ! 

I never saw its like before, 

I ne'er shall see its likeness more ; 

It seemed like me to want a mate, 

But was not half so desolate, 
275 And it was come to love me when 

None lived to love me so again. 

And cheering from my dungeon's brink. 

Had brought me back to feel and think. 

I know not if it late were free, 
280 Or broke its cage to perch on mine. 

But knowing well captivity, 

Sweet bird ! I could not wish for thine ! 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 305 

Or if it were, in winged guise, 

A visitant from Paradise ; 
285 For — Heaven forgive that thouglit ! the while 

Which made me both to weep and smile ; 

I sometimes deemed that it might be 

My brother's soul come down to me ; 

But then at last away it flew, 
290 And then 't was mortal — well I knew, 

For he would never thus have flown. 

And left me twice so doubly lone, — 

Lone — as the corse within its shroud. 

Lone — as a solitary cloud, 
295 A single cloud on a sunny day. 

While all the rest of heaven is clear, 

A frown upon the atmosphere. 

That hath no business to appear 

When skies are blue, and earth is gay. 

XI. 

300 A kind of change came in my fate. 
My keepers grew compassionate ; 
I know not what had made them so. 
They were inured to sights of woe, 
But so it was : — my broken chain 

305 With links unfastened did remain, 
And it was liberty to stride 
Along my cell from side to side. 
And up and down, and then athwart. 
And tread it over every part ; 

310 And round the pillars one by one. 
Returning where my walk begun. 
Avoiding only, as I trod. 
My brother's graves without a sod ; 
For if I thouoht with heedless tread 



306 LORD BYRON. 

315 My step profaned their lowly bed, 
My breath came gaspingly and thick, 
And my crushed heart fell blind and sick. 

XII. 

I made a footing- in the wall. 
It was not therefrom to escape, 

320 For I had buried one and all 

Who loved me in a human shape ; 
And the whole earth would henceforth be 
A wider prison unto me : 
No child — no sire — no kin had I, 

325 No partner in my misery ; 

I thought of this, and I was glad, 

For thought of them had made me mad ; 

But I was curious to ascend 

To my barred windows, and to bend 

330 Once more, upon the mountains high. 
The quiet of a loving eye. 

xin. 

I saw them — and they were the same. 

They were not changed like me in frame ; 

I saw their thousand years of snow 
335 On high — their wide long lake below, 

And the blue Rhone in fullest flow ; 

I heard the torrents leap and gush 

O'er channelled rock and broken bush ; 

I saw the white-walled distant town, 
340 And whiter sails go skimming down ; 

And then there was a little isle, 

341. Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not 
far from Chillon, is a very small island ; the only one I could 
perceive, in my voyage round and over the lake, within its cir- 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. 307 

Which in my very face did smile, 

The only one in view ; 
A small green isle it seemed no more, 

345 Scarce broader than my dungeon floor. 
But in it there were three tall trees, 
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze. 
And by it there were waters flowing, 
And on it there were young flowers growing, 

350 Of gentle breath and hue. 

The fish swam by the castle wall, 
And they seemed joyous each and all ; 
The eagle rode the rising blast, 
Methought he never flew so fast 

355 As then to me he seemed to fly, 
And then new tears came in my eye. 
And I felt troubled — and would fain 
I had not left my recent chain ; 
And when I did descend again, 

360 The darkness of my dim abode 
Fell on me as a heavy load ; 
It was as is a new-dug grave. 
Closing o'er one we sought to save, — 
And yet my glance, too much oppressed, 

365 Had almost need of such a rest. 

XIV. 

It might be months, or years, or days, 
I kept no count — I took no note, 

I had no hope my eyes to raise, 

And clear them of their dreary mote ; 
370 At last men came to set me free, 

cumferenee. It contains a few trees (I think not above three), 
and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect 
upon the view. Byron. 



308 LORD BYRON. 

I asked not why, and recked not where, 
It was at length the same to me, 
Fettered or fetterless to be, 
I learned to love despair. 

375 And thus when they appeared at last, 
And all my bonds aside were cast, 
These heavy walls to me had grown 
A hermitage — and all my own ! 
And half 1 felt as they were come 

380 To tear me from a second home : 
With spiders I had friendship made, 
And watched them in their sullen trade. 
Had seen the mice by moonlight play. 
And why should I feel less than they ? 

385 We were all inmates of one place. 
And I, the monarch of each race. 
Had power to kill — yet, strange to tell ! 
In quiet we had learned to dwell — 
My very chains and I grew friends, 

390 So much a long communion tends 
To make us what we are : — even I 
Eegained my freedom with a sigh. 



SONNET. 

Eteknal Spirit of the chainless Mind ! 
Brightest in dungeons. Liberty ! thou art. 
For there thy habitation is the heart — 
The heart which love of thee alone can bind ; 
5 And when thy sons to fetters are consigned — 
To fetters, and the damp vault's day less gloom, 
Their country conquers with their martyrdom. 



I 



FARE THEE WELL. 309 

And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. 
Cliillon ! tliy prison is a holy place, 
10 And tliy sad floor an altar — for 't was trod, 
Until his very steps have left a trace 

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, 
By Bonnivard ! — May none those marks efface ! 

For they appeal from tyranny to God. 



FARE THEE WELL. 

[Written in the spring of 1816, just after the separation from 
Lady Byron.] 

Alas ! they had been friends in Youth ; 
But whispering tongues can poison truth ; 
And constancy lives in realms above ; 
And Life is thorny ; and youth is vain : 
And to be wroth with one we love, 
Doth work like madness in the brain ; 



But never either found another 

To free the hollow heart from paining — 

They stood aloof, the scars remaining. 

Like cliffs, which had been rent asunder ; 

A dreary sea now flows between. 

But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder 

Shall wholly do away, I ween. 

The marks of that which once hath been. 

Coleridge's Christabel. 

Fare thee well ! and if forever. 

Still forever, fare thee well : 
Even though unforgiving, never 

'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel. 

5 Would that breast were bared before thee 
Where thy head so oft hath lain. 
While that placid sleep came o'er thee 
Which thou ne'er canst know again ; 



310 LORD BYRON. 

Would that breast, by thee glanced over, 
10 Every inmost thought could show ! 
Then thou wouldst at last discover 
'T was not well to spurn it so. 

Though the world for this commend thee - 
Though it smile upon the blow, 
15 Even its praises must offend thee. 
Founded on another's woe: 

Though my many faults defaced me, 

Could no other arm be found, 
Than the one which once embraced me, 
20 To inflict a cureless wound ? 

Yet, oh yet, thyself deceive not ; 

Love may sink by slow decay. 
But by sudden wrench, believe not 

Hearts can thus be torn away : 

25 Still thine own its life retaineth — 

Still must mine, though bleeding, beat ; 
And the undying thought which paineth 
Is — that we no more may meet. 

These are words of deeper sorrow 
30 Than the wail above the dead ; 
Both shall live, but every morrow 
Wake us from a widowed bed. 

And when thou would solace gather, 
When our child's first accents flow, 
35 Wilt thou teach her to say " Father ! " 
Though his care she must forego? 



i 



FARE THEE WELL. 311 

When her little hands shall press thee, 

When her lip to thine is pressed, 
Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee, 
40 Think of him thy love had blessed I 

Should her lineaments resemble 
Those thou never more mayst see. 

Then thy heart will softly tremble 
With a pulse yet true to me. 

45 All my faults perchance thou knowest, 
All my madness none can know ; 
All my hopes, where'er thou goest, 
Wither, yet with thee they go. 

Every feeling hath been shaken ; 
50 Pride, which not a world could bow, 
Bows to thee — by thee forsaken. 
Even my soul forsakes me now : 

But 't is done — all words are idle — 
Words from me are vainer still ; 
55 But the thoughts we cannot bridle 

Force their way without the will. — 

Fare thee well ! — thus disunited. 

Torn from every nearer tie. 
Seared in heart, and lone, and blighted, 
60 More than this I scarce can die. 

To many [this poem] appeared a strain of true conjugal ten- 
derness, — a kind of appeal which no woman with a heart could 
resist ; while by others, on the contrary, it was considered to be 
a mere showy effusion of sentiment, as difficult for real feel- 
ing to have produced as it was easy for fancy and art, and 



312 LORD BYRON. 

altogether unworthy of the deep interests involved in the sub- 
ject. To this latter opinion I confess my own to have, at first, 
strongly inclined, and suspicious as I could not help think- 
ing the sentiment that could, at such a moment, indulge in 
such verses, the taste that prompted or sanctioned their publica- 
tion appeared to me even still more questionable. On reading, 
however, his own account of all the circumstances in the Memo- 
randa, I found that on both points I had, in common with a 
large portion of the public, done him injustice. He there de- 
scribed, and in a manner whose sincerity there was no doubting, 
the swell of tender recollections under the influence of which, as 
be sat one night musing in his study, these stanzas were pro- 
duced, — the tears, as he said, falling fast over the paper as he 
wrote them. Neither did it appear, from that account, to have 
been from any wish or intention of his own, but through the 
injudicious zeal of a friend whom he had suffered to take a 
copy, that the verses met the public eye. Thomas Moore. 



SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY. 

[These stanzas were written on returning from a ball, where 
Lady Wilmot Horton had appeared in mourning, with numerous 
spangles on her dress.] 

She walks in beauty, like the nigiit 
Of cloudless climes and starry skies ; 

And all that 's best of dark and bright 
Meet in her aspect and her eyes : 
5 Thus mellowed to that tender light 
Which heaven to gaudy day denies. 

One shade the more, one ray the less, 
Had half impaired the nameless grace, 

Which waves in every raven tress, 
10 Or softly lightens o'er her face ; 

Where thoughts serenely sweet express 
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. 



THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB. 313 

And on that clieek, and o'er that brow, 

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, 
15 The smiles that win, the tints that glow, 

But tell of days in goodness spent. 
A mind at peace with all below, 

A heart whose love is innocent ! 



THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB. 

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, 
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold ; 
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the 

sea, 
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. 

5 Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is 

green, 
That host mth their banners at sunset were seen : 
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath 

blown, 
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown. 

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the 

blast, 
10 And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed ; 
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and 

chill. 
And their hearts but once heaved, and forever 

grew still! 

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide. 
But through it there rolled not the breath of his 
pride ; 



314 LORD BYRON. 

15 And the foam of his gasping lay white on the 
turf, 
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. 

And there lay the rider distorted and pale, 

With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his 

mail, 
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, 
20 The lances unlif ted, the trumpet unblown. 

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail. 
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal ; 
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, 
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord ! 



WILLIAM COWPERJ 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

CowPER was twenty years old when Gray's Elegy was 
published, for he was born November 26, 1731. A few 
years after Gray's death, Cowper, then forty-six years old, 
wrote to a friend : "I have been reading Gray's works, and 
think him the only poet since Shakespeare entitled to the 
character of sublime." Probably he was thinking of Gray's 
odes when he wrote thus ; he himself had a temperament 
and a poetic gift which might make him admire sublimity 
in others without a particle of regret for the lack of it in 
his own verse. Gray wrote his odes in the grand style ; he 
was a scholar who kept up the traditions of great poetry. 
Cowper, with a similar early training in classical literature, 
lived away from universities and cities, in a flat pastoral 
country, and wrote his poems partly for diversion, partly 
because, in the leisure he had, this was an agreeable occupa- 
tion to which his friends urged him, but most of all because 
his poetic nature gently stirred him. He wrote under the 
influence of a placid country life and a strong though not 
always tranquil religious feeling, and the simplicity of his 
themes found in his truthful, conscientious spirit a simple 
expression, so that he was a forerunner in some ways of 
Wordsworth. He was a contemporary of Goldsmith, and 
they had in common a directness and naturalness in poetry, 
but Goldsmith, even when writing of rural scenes, was a town 

1 Pronounced Cooper, some members of the family so spelling 
the name. 



316 WILLIAM COWPER. 

poet. Cowper was a country poet, who looked from a dis- 
tance and without much personal sympathy on town life. 

He was born of a gentle family, with noble descent, 
though one is tempted to reckon more on his mother's in- 
heritance of the poetic wealth of Donne than of the royalty 
of Henry III. He was six years old when his mother died, 
and though the poem which he wrote years after, on receiv- 
ing her portrait, is an expansion by the imagination of the 
fact which memory brings to mind, there is no doubt that 
the child suffered keenly through the loss, for he was a 
timid, shrinking boy, and at this early age was sent to a large 
boarding - school, where he suffered untold misery. Some 
boys, thrown thus into a rough world, come out toughened 
by the experience ; others are driven into solitary, secretive 
habits. Cowper, looking back on his boyish life, pleaded 
earnestly for the shelter of home when children were still 
young. He was sent to Westminster, one of the great pub- 
lic schools, and there finished his formal education. He 
could not have been wholly unhappy at school, for some of 
his longer poems have bright pictures of schoolboy life. 

At eighteen he began the study of law, but he had little 
interest in the profession. He lived, however, after he was 
twenty-one and till he was tliirty-two in the Temple, one of 
the great lawyers' houses in London, which in those days 
were the resort of young unmarried men, of whom a few 
practised law diligently, but many lived socially with a slight 
show of work. Cowper was one of these latter. With a 
few others whose names are scarcely remembered he formed 
a literary club, and they all wrote nonsense verses and 
played with literature. It is quite possible that Cowper's 
name would have been as little known to-day as those of his 
companions, but for a sudden change in his life. 

His father had died a few years after Cowper began the 
study of law, and the money which he left his son was 
nearly gone, when an occasion came to which the idle 
lawyer had looked forward. He had thought it not unlikely 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 317 

he would secure one of the public offices in the gift of the 
government through family influence, and so it turned out. 
A vacancy occurred, that of clerk of the Journals of the 
House of Lords, and the place was to be disposed of by one 
Major Cowper, a kinsman, who offered it to the young 
lawyer. Possibly, if he had been spending the past ten years 
in hard work, he would have been quite ready to take the 
office ; but his idleness was both the effect and cause of a 
general melancholy which had crept over him. He had led, 
we may say, a restless, unhealthy sort of life ; a physical 
disorder underlay it, but also his training had not given him 
the will to resist. And so, when this opportunity came, he 
was seized with a kind of terror. All sorts of difficulties 
sprang up which he could not seem to meet. He read the 
Journals which he was to keep, and the task loomed up in 
frightful proportions. He became so deranged by all this 
that he tried in various ways to kill himself. He was de- 
feated sometimes by circumstance, sometimes by his own 
irresolution at the last moment. At last in trying to hang 
himself he fell, a servant came in, and Cowper, sending for 
Major Cowper, broke down completely, surrendered his ap- 
pointment, and went to a private asylum for the insane. 

After eighteen months, Cowper was discharged, and his 
property being now nearly all gone, his relatives subscribed 
money enough to take care of him, supposing he would live 
out a life of uselessness. He went into the country, to 
Huntingdon near Cambridge, and there he fell in with a 
family named Unwin, who befriended him, and with whom 
he went to live. The Rev. William Unwin was a clergy- 
man whose wife, much younger, was but seven years older 
than Cowper, and whose son was preparing for the ministry. 
Between Cowper and the Unwins there sprang up a most 
affectionate relation, and when, two years later, the old cler- 
gyman died, his widow went to live in the little village of 
Olney, and Cowper followed her there as one of her family. 

The principal reason for their going to Olney was the 



318 WILLIAM COWPER. 

presence there of the Rev. John Newton, who was an im- 
portant figure in the religious revival of the time, — the re- 
vival which was led by Wesley and Whitefield, — and much 
admired both by Mrs. Unwin and Cowper. Newton had a 
strong influence over Cowper, and was largely the inspirer 
of the many hymns which Cowper wrote, some of which, 
like 

" God moves in a mysterious way," 

and 

" Oh, for a closer walk with God," 

are found in most hymn-books to-day. 

It was not long after taking up his life in Olney that 
Cowper again fell into a period of insanity, and was long 
and faithfully attended by Mrs. Unwin. He recovered, and 
thenceforth led a quiet, retired life in the country, in the 
companionship chiefly of women, — Mrs. Unwin, his cousin 
Lady Hesketh, and a friend, Lady Austen. Mrs. Unwin, 
with a woman's bright instinct, suggested occupation for him 
in verse-making, and Cowper, now nearly fifty years old, 
took up the instrument he had played with, and since the old 
themes of his idle life in the Temple had no charms for him, 
he took his new, more serious thought, and turned it into 
verse, writing a number of satires, to which he gave the 
name of Truth, Table Talk, Expostulation, Hope, Conver- 
sation, etc. These were more than mere exercises in verse, 
but they lacked spontaneity. This came later when, under 
the general head of The Task, he wrote a number of ram- 
bling, graceful, light though serious poems into which he 
poured his best thought. His poetry, it may be believed, 
cured him of much of his melancholy, and as he grew 
healthier, so he wrote wholesome, sweet verse, now and 
then, as in John Gilpin, breaking into laughter. He played 
with his pets, he worked in his garden, he translated Homer, 
and little by little his old friends in London found that the 
person whom they supposed had been thrown aside as good 



i 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 319 

for nothing was a famous man. He wrote from his seclu- 
sion most delightful letters, which have been published since 
his death. People now go back to Cowper as they like to 
go into the country and see clear streams, limpid lakes, and 
gentle rolling country. His poetry is full of rest and peace. 
He died April 25, 1800. 



THE DIVERTING HISTORY OF JOHN GILPIN. 

SHOWING HOW HE WENT FARTHER THAN HE IN- 
TENDED, AND CAME HOME SAFE AGAIN. 

John Gilpin was a citizen 

Of credit and renown, 
A trainband captain eke was he 

Of famous London town. 

5 John Gilpin's spouse said to her dear, 
" Though wedded we have been 
These twice ten tedious years, yet we 
No holiday have seen. 

" To-morrow is our wedding day, 
10 And we will then repair 
Unto the Bell at Edmonton 
All in a chaise and pair. 

" My sister, and my sister's child, 
Myself, and children three, 
15 Will fill the chaise ; so you must ride 
On horseback after we." 

He soon replied, " I do admire 

Of womankind but one. 
And you are she, my dearest dear, 
20 Therefore it shall be done. 

16. Mrs. Gilpin had a better ear for rhyme than she had 
knowledge of grammar. 



THE HISTORY OF JOHN GILPIN. 321 

" I am a linendraper bold, 
As all the world doth know, 
And my good friend the calender 
Will lend his horse to go." 

25 Quoth Mrs. Gilpin, " That 's well said ; 
And for that wine is dear. 
We will be furnished with our own. 
Which is both bright and clear." 

John Gilpin kiss'd his loving wife ; 
30 O'erjoyed was he to find. 
That, though on pleasure she was bent, 
She had a frugal mind. 

The morning came, the chaise was brought, 
But yet was not allow'd 
35 To drive up to the door, lest all 
Should say that she was proud. 

So three doors off the chaise was stay'd, 

Where they did all get in ; 

Six precious souls, and all agog 

40 To dash throuofh thick and thin. 



"&' 



Smack went the whip, round went the wheels, 

Were never folks so glad. 
The stones did rattle underneath, 

As if Cheapside were mad. 

45 John Gilpin at his horse's side 
Seized fast the flowing mane, 

23. As John Gilpin was a linendraper, he could safely count 
on the friendship of a man whose business it was to press and 
smooth out cloth in a machine. 



322 WILLIAM COWPER. 

And up lie got, in haste to ride, 
But soon came down again ; 

For saddletree scarce reacli'd had he 
50 His journey to begin, 
When, turning round his head, he saw 
Three customers come in. 

So down he came ; for loss of time. 
Although it grieved him sore, 
55 Yet loss of pence, full well he knew, 
Would trouble him much more. 

'T was long before the customers 

Were suited to their mind. 
When Betty screaming came down stairs, 
60 " The wine is left behind ! " 

" Good lack ! " quoth he — " yet bring it me, 

My leathern belt likewise. 
In which I bear my trusty sword 

When I do exercise." 

65 Now Mistress Gilpin (careful soul !) 
Had two stone bottles found. 
To hold the liquor that she loved. 
And keep it safe and sound. 

Each bottle had a curling ear, 
70 Through which the belt he drew. 
And hung a bottle on each side, 
To make his balance true. 

62. It was the custom then in London, much more than now, 
for a shopkeeper to live over his shop. 



THE HISTORY OF JOHN GILPIN. 323 

Then over all, that he might be 
Equipp'd from top to toe, 
75 His long red cloak, well brush' d and neat, 
He manfully did throw. 

Now see him mounted once again 

Upon his nimble steed. 
Full slowly pacing o'er the stones, 
80 With caution and good heed. 

But finding soon a smoother road 

Beneath his well shod feet. 
The snorting beast began to trot, 

Which gall'd him in his seat. 

85 "So, fair and softly," John he cried, 
But John he cried in vain ; 
That trot became a gallop soon. 
In spite of curb and rein. 

So stooping down, as needs he must 
90 Who cannot sit upright, 
He grasp'd the mane with both his hands. 
And eke with all his might. 

His horse, who never in that sort 
Had handled been before, 
95 What thing upon his back had got 
Did wonder more and more. 

Away went Gilpin, neck or nought ; 

Away went hat and wig ; 
He little dreamt, when he set out, 
100 Of running such a rig. 



324 WILLIAM COWPER. 

The wind did blow, the cloak did fly, 

Like streamer long and gay, 
Till, loop and button failing both, 

At last it flew away. 

105 Then might all people well discern 
The bottles he had slung ; 
A bottle swinging at each side. 
As hath been said or sung. 

The dogs did bark, the children scream'd, 
uo Up flew the windows all ; 

And every soul cried out, " Well done ! '* 
As loud as he could bawl. 

Away went Gilpin — who but he ? 
His fame soon spread around, 
U5 " He carries weight ! he rides a race ! 
'T is for a thousand pound ! " 

And still as fast as he drew near, 

'T was wonderful to view, 
How in a trice the turnpike men 
120 Their gates wide open threw. 

And now, as he went bowing down 

His reeking head full low. 
The bottles twain behind his back 

Were shatter'd at a blow. 

125 Down ran the wine into the road. 
Most piteous to be seen, 

114. So did the honest people think our linendraper a man 
who rode for a wager, being handicapped for the trial. 



II 



THE HISTORY OF JOHN GILPIN. 325 

Which made his horse's flanks to smoke 
As they had basted been. 

But still he seem'd to carry weight, 
130 With leathern girdle braced ; 
For all might see the bottle necks 
Still dangling at his waist. 

Thus all through merry Islington 
These gambols did he play, 
135 Until he came unto the Wash 
Of Edmonton so gay ; 

And there he threw the wash about 

On both sides of the way, 
Just like unto a trundling mop, 
140 Or a wild goose at play. 

At Edmonton his loving wife 

From the balcony spied 
Her tender husband, wondering much 

To see how he did ride. 

145 " Stop, stop, John Gilpin ! — Here 's the house," 
They all at once did cry ; 
" The dinner waits, and we are tired ; '* 
Said Gilpin — " So am I ! " 

But yet his horse was not a whit 
150 Inclined to tarry there ; 

For why ? — his owner had a house 
Full ten miles off, at Ware. 

133. Where Tom lived. 



326 WILLIAM COWPER. 

So like an arrow swift lie flew, 
Shot by an archer strong ; 
155 So did he fly — which brings me to 
The middle of my song. 

Away went Gilpin out of breath, 

And sore against his will, 
Till at his friend the calender's 
160 His horse at last stood still. 

The calender, amazed to see 

His neighbor in such trim, 
Laid down his pipe, flew to the gate, 

And thus accosted him : 

165 " What news ? what news ? your tidings tell ; 
Tell me you must and shall — 
Say why bareheaded you are come, 
Or why you come at all ? " 

Now Gilpin had a pleasant wit, 
170 And loved a timely joke ; 
And thus unto the calender 
In merry guise he spoke : 

" I came because your horse would come ; 
And, if I well forbode, 
175 My hat and wig will soon be here. 
They are upon the road." 

The calender, right glad to Imd 

His friend in merry pin, 
Keturn'd him not a single word, 
180 But to the house went in ; 



I 



THE HISTORY OF JOHN GILPIN. 327 

Whence straight he came with hat and wig ; 

A wig that flow'd behind, 
A hat not much the worse for wear, 

Each comely in its kind. 

185 He held them up, and in his turn 
Thus show'd his ready wit, 
" My head is twice as big as yours, 
They therefore needs must fit. 

" But let me scrape the dirt away 
190 That hangs upon your face ; 
And stop and eat, for well you may 
Be in a hungry case." 

Said John, "It is my wedding day. 
And all the world would stare, 
195 If wife should dine at Edmonton, 
And I should dine at Ware." 

So turning to his horse, he said, 

" I am in haste to dine ; 
'T was for your pleasure you came here, 
200 You shall go back for mine." 

Ah luckless speech, and bootless boast ! 

For which he paid full dear ; 
For, while he spake, a braying ass 

Did sing most loud and clear ; 

205 Whereat his horse did snort, as he 
Had heard a lion roar, 
And gallopp'd off with all his might, 
As he had done before. 



328 WILLIAM COWPER. 

Away went Gilpin, and away 
210 Went Gilpin's hat and wig : 
He lost them sooner than at first, 
For why ? — they were too big. 

Now mistress Gilpin, when she saw 
Her husband posting down 
215 Into the country far away, 

She puU'd out half a crown ; 

And thus unto the youth she said. 

That drove them to the Bell, 
" This shall be yours, when you bring back 
220 My husband safe and well." 

The youth did ride, and soon did meet 

John coming back amain ; 
Whom in a trice he tried to stop. 

By catching at his rein ; 

225 But not performing what he meant, 
And gladly would have done, 
The frighted steed he frighted more, 
And made him faster run. 

Away went Gilpin, and away 
230 Went postboy at his heels. 

The postboy's horse right glad to miss 
The lumbering of the wheels. 

Six gentlemen upon the road. 
Thus seeing Gilpin fly, 
235 With postboy scampering in the rear, 
They raised the hue and cry : — 



THE HISTORY OF JOHN GILPIN. 329 

" Stop thief ! stop thief ! — a highwayman I " 

Not one of them was mute ; 
And all and each that passed that way 
240 Did join in the pursuit. 

And now the turnpike gates again 
- Flew open in short space ; 
The toll-men thinking as before. 
That Gilpin rode a race. 

245 And so he did, and won it too, 
For he got first to town ; 
Nor stopp'd till where he had got up 
He did again get down. 

Now let us sing, " Long live the king, 
250 And Gilpin, long live he ; " 

And when he next doth ride abroad, 
May I be there to see ! 

236. To raise a hue and cry is the technical term in law for 
the assistance which chance passers-by render an officer of the 
law who is in pursuit of a rogue. 



ON THE RECEIPT OF MY MOTHER'S PICTURE 

OUT OF NORFOLK, THE GIFT OF MY COUSIN, ANN 

BODHAM. 

O THAT those lips had language ! Life has pass'd 
With me but roughly since I heard thee last. 
Those lips are thine — thy own sweet smile I see, 
The same that oft in childhood solaced me ; 

5 Voice only fails, else how distinct they say, 
" Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away ! " 
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes 
(Blest be the art that can immortalize, 
The art that baffles Time's tyrannic claim 

10 To quench it !) here shines on me still the same. 
Faithful remembrancer of one so dear, 
O welcome guest, though unexpected here ! 
Who bidst me honour with an artless song. 
Affectionate, a mother lost so long, 

15 1 will obey, not willingly alone. 
But gladly, as the precept were her own : 
And, while that face renews my filial grief, 
Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief, 
Shall steep me in Elysian reverie, 

20 A momentary dream, that thou art she. 

My mother ! when I learn'd that thou wast dead, 
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed ? 
Hover'd thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son. 
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun ? 

25 Perhaps thou gavest me, though unfelt, a kiss ; 

16, As, as thouffh. 



MY MOTHER'S PICTURE. 331 

Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss — 
All, that maternal smile ! it answers — Yes. 
I heard the bell toll'd on thy burial day, 
I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away, 

30 And, turning from my nursery window, drew 
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu ! 
But was it such ? — It was. — Where thou art gone 
Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. 
May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, 

35 The parting word shall pass my lips no more ! 
Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern ! 
Oft gave me promise of thy quick return. 
What ardently I wish'd, I long believed. 
And, disappointed still, was still deceived. 

40 By expectation every day beguiled, 
Dupe of to-morrow even from a child. 
Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went, 
Till, all my stock of infant sorrows spent, 
I learn'd at last submission to my lot, 

45 But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot. 

Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more, 
Children not thine have trod my nursery floor ; 
And where the gardener Robin, day by day, 
Drew me to school along the public way, 

50 Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapt 
In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet capped, 
'T is now become a history little known. 
That once we call'd the pastoral house our own. 
Shortlived possession ! but the record fair, 

55 That memory keeps of all thy kindness there. 
Still outlives many a storm, that has effaced 
A thousand other themes less deeply traced. 
Thy nightly visits to my chamber made. 
That thou mightst know me safe and warmly laid ; 



332 WILLIAM COWPER. 

60 Thy morning bounties ere I left my home, 

The biscuit, or confectionary plum ; 

The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestow'd 

By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glow'd : 

All this, and more endearing still than all, 
65 Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall, 

Ne'er roughen'd by those cataracts and breaks, 

That humour interposed too often makes ; 

All this still legible in memory's page, 

And still to be so to my latest age, 
70 Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay 

Such honours to thee as my numbers may ; 

Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere. 

Not scorn'd in Heaven, though little noticed here. 
Could Time, his flight reversed, restore the hours, 
75 When, playing with thy vesture's tissued flowers, 

The violet, the pink, the jessamine, 

I prick'd them into paper with a pin, 

(And thou wast happier than myself the while, 

Wouldst softly speak, and stroke my head and 
smile), 
80 Could those few pleasant days again appear, 

Might one wish bring them, would I wish them 
here ? 

I would not trust my heart ; — the dear delight 

Seems so to be desired, perhaps I might. 

But no — what here we call our life is such, 
85 So little to be loved, and thou so much, 

That I should ill requite thee to constrain 

Thy unbound spirit into bonds again. 

Thou, as a gallant bark from Albion's coast, 

(The storms all weather'd and the ocean cross'd) 
90 Shoots into port at some well-haven'd isle. 

Where spices breathe, and brighter seasons smile, 



I 

II 



MY MOTHER'S PICTURE. 333 

There sits quiescent on the floods, that show 
Her beauteous form reflected clear below, 
While airs impregnated with incense play 

95 Around her, fanning light her streamers gay ; 
So thou, with sails how swift ! hast reach'd the 

shore, 
" Where tempests never beat nor billows roar ; " 
And thy loved consort on the dangerous tide 
Of life long since has anchor'd by thy side. 

100 But me, scarce hoping to attain that rest, 

Always from port withheld, always distress'd — 
Me howling blasts drive devious, tempest-toss'd. 
Sails ripp'd, seams opening wide, and compass lost. 
And day by day some current's thwarting force 

105 Sets me more distant from a prosperous course. 
Yet oh, the thought, that thou art safe, and he ! 
That thought is joy, arrive what may to me. 
My boast is not that I deduce my birth 
From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth ; 

no But higher far my proud pretensions rise, — 
The son of parents pass'd into the skies. 
And now, farewell ! Time unrevoked has run 
His wonted course, yet what I wish'd is done. 
By contemplation's help, not sought in vain, 

115 1 seem to have lived my childhood o'er again ; 
To have renew'd the joys that once were mine, 
Without the sin of violating thine ; 
And, while the wings of fancy still are free, 
And I can view this mimic show of thee, 

120 Time has but half succeeded in his theft, — 
Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left. 



ON THE LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE. 

WRITTEN WHEN THE NEWS AERIVED. 

Toll for tlie brave ! 

The brave that are no more ! 
All sunk beneath the wave, 

Fast by their native shore ! 

5 Eight hundred of the brave, 
.Whose courage well was tried. 
Had made the vessel heel, 
And laid her on her side. 

A land breeze shook the shrouds, 
10 And she was overset ; 
Down went the Royal George, 
With all her crew complete. 

Toll for the brave ! 

Brave Kempenfelt is gone ; 
15 His last sea-fight is fought ; 
His work of glory done. 

4. The Royal George, 108 guns, one of Lord Howe's fleet, 
and commanded by Admiral Kempenfelt, after service in the 
war with America returned to Portsmouth, England, and requir- 
ino- repair, was not put into dock, but heeled over, a common 
mode in those days. She was, however, heeled over too far ; 
the water rushed into the ports, and down she went with the loss 
by drowning of nine hundred out of the eleven hundred men, 
women, and children on board. The loss occurred August 29, 
1782. 



I 



ON THE LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE. 335 

It was not in the battle ; 

No tempest gave the shock ; 
She sj)rang no fatal leak ; 
20 She ran upon no rock. 

His sword was in its sheath ; 

His fingers held the pen, 
When Kempenfelt went down 

With twice four hundred men. 

25 Weigh the vessel up, 

Once dreaded by our foes ! 
And mingle with our cup 
The tear that England owes. 

Her timbers yet are sound, 
30 And she may float again 
Full charged with England's thunder, 
And plough the distant main. 

But Kempenfelt is gone. 
His victories are o'er ; 
35 And he and his eight hundred 

Shall plough the waves no more. 

36. After the disaster many of the guns were fished up, but 
no attempt was made to raise the ship. In 1817 divers made a 
fresh examination, but the ship could not be raised. In 1839 
the hulk was blown up by gunpowder, and the harbor cleared 
of the obstruction. 



VERSES 

SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN BY ALEXANDER SELKIRK, 
DURING HIS SOLITARY ABODE IN THE ISLAND OF 
JUAN FERNANDEZ. 

I AM monarch of all I survey, 

My right there is none to dispute ; 
From the centre all round to the sea 

I am lord of the fowl and the brute. 
5 O Solitude ! where are the charms 

That sages have seen in thy face ? 
Better dwell in the midst of alarms 

Than reign in this horrible place. 

I am out of humanity's reach, 
10 I must finish my journey alone, 
Never hear the sweet music of speech, 

I start at the sound of my own. 
The beasts that roam over the plain. 
My form with indifference see ; 
15 They are so unacquainted with man, 
Their tameness is shocking to me. 

Society, friendship, and love. 

Divinely bestow'd upon man. 
Oh, had I the wings of a dove, 
20 How soon would I taste you again ! 

1. Selkirk is generally supposed to have been the actual ship- 
wrecked Englishman whose narrative gave birth to Robinson 
Crusoe. 



I 



I 



II 



ALEXANDER SELKIRK. 337 

My sorrows I then might assuage 
In the ways of religion and truth, 

Might learn from the wisdom of age. 
And be cheer'd by the sallies of youth. 

25 Eeligion ! what treasure untold 
Besides in that heavenly word ! 
More precious than silver and gold, 
Or all that this earth can afford ; 
But the sound of the church-going bell 
30 These valleys and rocks never heard, 
Never sigh'd at the sound of a knell, 
Or smil'd when a sabbath appear'd. 

Ye winds, that have made me your sport, 
Convey to this desolate shore 
35 Some cordial endearing report 
Of a land I shall visit no more. 
My friends, do they now and then send 

A wish or a thought after me ? 
O tell me I yet have a friend, 
40 Thouo^h a friend I am never to see. 

How fleet is a glance of the mind ! 

Compared with the speed of its flight, 
The tempest itself lags behind. 

And the swift-winged arrows of light. 
45 When I think of my own native land, 

In a moment I seem to be there ; 
But alas ! recollection at hand 

Soon hurries me back to despair. 

But the seafowl is gone to her nest, 
50 The beast is laid down in his lair 5 



338 



WILLIAM COWPER. 



Even here is a season of rest, 
And I to my cabin repair. 
There 's mercy in every place, 
And mercy, encouraging thought ! 
55 Gives even affliction a grace. 
And reconciles man to his lot. 



EPITAPH ON A HARE. 

Heke lies, whom hound did ne'er pursue, 
Nor swifter greyhound follow, 

Whose foot ne'er tainted morning dew, 
Nor e'er heard huntsman's halloo ; 

5 Old Tiney, surliest of his kind. 
Who, nursed with tender care, 
And to domestic bounds confined. 
Was still a wild Jack hare. 

Though duly from my hand he took 
10 His pittance every night. 
He did it with a jealous look, 
And, when he could, would bite. 

His diet was of wheaten bread, 
And milk, and oats, and straw ; 
15 Thistles, or lettuces instead, 
With sand to scour his maw. 

On twigs of hawthorn he regaled. 

On pippins' russet peel, 
And, when his juicy salads fail'd, 
20 Sliced carrot pleased him well. 

A Turkey carpet was his lawn, 
Whereon he loved to bound. 



340 WILLIAM COWPER. 

To skip and gambol like a fawn, 
And swing his rump around. 

25 His frisking was at evening hours, 
For then he lost his fear, 
But most before approaching showers, 
Or when a storm drew near. 

Eight years and ^ye round rolling moons 
30 He thus saw steal away, 
Dozing out all his idle noons. 
And every night at play. 

I kept him for his humour's sake. 
For he would oft beguile 
35 My heart of thoughts that made it ache, 
And force me to a smile. 

But now beneath his walnut shade 

He finds his long last home. 
And waits, in snug concealment laid, 
40 Till gentler Puss shall come. 

He, still more aged, feels the shocks. 
From which no care can save. 

And, partner once of Tiney's box, 
Must soon partake his grave. 



I 
I 

I 



THE TREATMENT OF HIS HARES. 341 



THE FOLLOWING ACCOUNT OF 

THE TREATMENT OF HIS HARES 

WAS INSERTED BY COWPER IN THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE. 

In the year 1774, being much indisposed both in 
mind and body, incapable of diverting myself either 
with company or books, and yet in a condition that 
made some diversion necessary, I was glad of anything 
that would engage my attention without fatiguing it. 
The children of a neighbour of mine had a leveret 
given them for a plaything ; it was at that time about 
three months old. Understanding better how to tease 
the poor creature than to feed it, and soon becoming 
weary of their charge, they readily consented that 
their father, who saw it pining and growing leaner 
every day, shoidd offer it to my acceptance. I was 
willing enough to take the prisoner under my protec- 
tion, perceiving that, in the management of such an 
animal, and in the attempt to tame it, I should find 
just that sort of employment which my case required. 
It was soon known among the neighbours that I was 
pleased with the present, and the consequence was, 
that in a short time I had as many leverets offered to 
me as would have stocked a paddock. I undertook 
the care of three, which it is necessary that I should 
here distinguish by the names I gave them — Puss, 
Tiney, and Bess. Notwithstanding the two feminine 
appellatives, I must inform you that they were all 
males. Immediately commencing carpenter, I built 
them houses to sleep in ; each had a separate apart- 
ment, so contrived that their ordure would pass through 



342 WILLIAM COWPER. 

the bottom of it ; an earthen pan placed under each 
received whatsoever fell, which being duly emptied 
and washed, they were thus kept perfectly sweet and 
clean. In the daytime they had the range of a hall, 
and at night retired each to his own bed, never intrud- 
ing into that of another. 

Puss grew presently familiar, would leap into my 
lap, raise himself upon his hinder feet, and bite the 
hair from my temple. He would suffer me to take 
him up, and to carry him about in my arms, and has 
more than once fallen fast asleep upon my knee. He 
was ill three days, during which time I nursed him, 
kept him apart from his fellows, that they might not 
molest him (for, like many other wild animals, they 
persecute one of their own species that is sick), and 
by constant care, and trying him with a variety of 
herbs, restored him to perfect health. No creature 
could be more grateful than my patient after his 
recovery ; a sentiment which he most significantly 
expressed by licking my hand, first the back of it, 
then the palm, then every finger separately, then 
between all the fingers, as if anxious to leave no part 
of it unsaluted ; a ceremony which he never performed 
but once again upon a similar occasion. Finding him 
extremely tractable, I made it my custom to carry 
him always after breakfast into the garden, where he 
hid himself generally under the leaves of a cucumber 
vine, sleeping or chewing the cud till evening; in 
the leaves also of that vine he found a favourite re- 
past. I had not long habituated him to this taste 
of liberty, before he began to be impatient for the 
return of the time when he might enjoy it. He 
would invite me to the garden by drumming upon 
my knee, and by a look of such expression, as it was 



THE TREATMENT OF HIS HARES. 343 

not possible to misinterpret. If this rhetoric did not 
immediately succeed, he would take the skirt of my 
coat between his teeth, and pull it with all his force. 
Thus Puss might be said to be perfectly tamed, the 
shyness of his nature was done away, and on the 
whole it was visible by many symptoms, wliich I have 
not room to enumerate, that he was happier in human 
society than when shut up with his natural compan- 
ions. 

Not so Tiney ; upon him the kindest treatment had 
not the least effect. He too was sick, and in his sick- 
ness had an equal share of my attention ; but if, after 
his recovery, I took the liberty to stroke him, he would 
grunt, strike with his fore feet, spring forward, and 
bite. He was, however, very entertaining in his way ; 
even his surliness was matter of mirth, and in his 
play he preserved such an air of gravity, and per- 
formed his feats with such a solemnity of manner, 
that in him too I had an agreeable companion. 

Bess, who died soon after he was full grown, and 
whose death was occasioned by his being turned into 
his box, which had been washed, while it was yet 
damp, was a hare of great humour and drollery. 
Puss was tamed by gentle usage ; Tiney was not to be 
tamed at all ; and Bess had a courage and confidence 
that made him tame from the beginning. I always 
admitted them into the parlour after supper, when the 
carpet affording their feet a firm hold, they would 
frisk, and bound, and play a thousand gambols, in 
which Bess, being remarkably strong and fearless, 
was always superior to the rest, and proved himself 
the Vestris ^ of the party. One evening, the cat, being 
in the room, had the hardiness to pat Bess upon the 
1 A ballet-dancer of the time. 



344 WILLIAM COWPER. 

cheek, an indignity which he resented by drumming 
upon her back with such violence that the cat was 
happy to escape from under his paws, and hide her- 
self. 

I describe these animals as having each a character 
of his own. Such they were in fact, and their coun- 
tenances were so expressive of that character, that, 
when I looked only on the face of either, I immedi. 
ately knew which it was. It is said that a shepherd, 
however numerous his flock, soon becomes so familiar 
with their features, that he can, by that indication 
only, distinguish each from all the rest ; and yet, to a 
common observer, the difference is hardly perceptible. 
I doubt not that the same discrimination in the cast 
of countenances would be discoverable in hares, and 
am persuaded that among a thousand of them no two 
could be found exactly similar : a circumstance little 
suspected by those who have not had opportimity to 
observe it. These creatures have a singular sagacity 
in discovering: the minutest alteration that is made in 
the place to which they are accustomed, and instantly 
apply their nose to the examination of a new object. 
A small hole being burnt in the carpet, it was mended 
with a patch, and that patch in a moment underwent 
the strictest scrutiny. They seem too to be very much 
directed by the smell in the choice of their favourites : 
to some persons, though they saw them daily, they 
could never be reconciled, and would even scream 
when they attempted to touch them ; but a miller 
coming in engaged their affections at once ; his pow- 
dered coat had charms that were irresistible. It is no 
wonder that my intimate acquaintance with these spe- 
cimens of the kind has taught me to hold the sports- 
man's amusement in abhorrence ; he little knows what 



THE TREATMENT OF HIS HARES. 345 

amiable creatures he persecutes, of what gratitude 
they are capable, how cheerful they are in their spirits, 
what enjoyment they have of life, and that, impressed 
as they seem with a peculiar dread of man, it is only 
because man gives them peculiar cause for it. 

That I may not be tedious, I will just give a short 
summary of those articles of diet that suit them best. 

I take it to be a general opinion that they graze, 
but it is an erroneous one, at least grass is not their 
staple ; they seem rather to use it medicinally, soon 
quitting it for leaves of almost any kind. Sowthistle, 
dandelion, and lettuce are their favourite vegetables, 
especially the last. I discovered by accident that fine 
white sand is in great estimation with them ; I sup- 
pose as a digestive. It happened that I was cleaning 
a birdcage when the hares were with me ; I placed a 
pot filled with such sand upon the floor, which being 
at once directed to by a strong instinct, they devoured 
voraciously ; since that time I have generally taken 
care to see them well supplied with it. They account 
green corn a delicacy, both blade and stalk, but the 
ear they seldom eat : straw of any kind, especially 
wheat-straw, is another of their dainties ; they will 
feed greedily upon oats, but if furnished with clean 
straw never want them ; it serves them also for a bed, 
and, if shaken up daily, will be kept sweet and dry for 
a considerable time. They do not, indeed, require aro- 
matic herbs, but will eat a small quantity of them with 
great relish, and are particularly fond of the plant 
called musk ; they seem to resemble sheep in this, 
that, if their pasture be too succulent, they are very 
subject to the rot ; to prevent which, I always made 
bread their principal nourishment, and, filling a pan 
with it, cut it into small squares, placed it every even- 



346 WILLIAM COWPER. 

ing in their chambers, for they feed only at evening 
and in the night ; during the winter, when vegetables 
were not to be got, I mingled this mess of bread with 
shreds of carrot, adding to it the rind of apples cut 
extremely thin ; for though they are fond of the par- 
ing, the apple itself disgusts them. These, however, not 
being a sufficient substitute for the juice of summer 
herbs, they must at this time be supplied with water ; 
but so placed that they cannot overset it into their beds. 
I must not omit that occasionally they are much pleased 
with twigs of hawthorn, and of the common brier, 
eating even the very wood when it is of considerable 
thickness. 

Bess, I have said, died young ; Tiney lived to be 
nine years old, and died at last, I have reason to think, 
of some hurt in his loins by a fall ; Puss is still liv- 
ing, and has just completed his tenth year, discovering 
no signs of decay, nor even of age, except that he is 
grown more discreet and less frolicsome than he was. 
I cannot conclude without observing that I have lately 
introduced a dog to his acquaintance, a spaniel that 
had never seen a hare to a hare that had never seen a 
spaniel. I did it with great caution, but there was no 
real need of it. Puss discovered no token of fear, 
nor Marquis the least symptom of hostility. There is, 
therefore, it should seem, no natural antipathy between 
dog and hare, but the pursuit of the one occasions 
the flight of the other, and the dog pursues because he 
is trained to it ; they eat bread at the same time out of 
the same hand, and are in all respects sociable and 
friendly, 

I should not do complete justice to my subject, did 
I not add that they have no ill scent belonging to 
them, that they are indef atigably nice in keeping them- 




THE TREATMENT OF HIS HARES. 347 

selves clean, for whicli purpose nature has furnished 
them with a brush under each foot ; and that they are 
never infested by any vermin. 

May 28, 1784 

MEMOEANDUM FOUND AMONG MR. COWPER's PAPERS. 

Tuesday, March 9, 1786. 

This day died poor Puss, aged eleven years eleven 
months. He died between twelve and one at noon, of 
mere old age, and apparently without pain. 




THOMAS GKAY. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

Thomas Gray was born in London, December 26, 
1716, and died in Cambridge, July 30, 1771. Thus a full 
hundred years separated him from Milton, and what a 
difference there was in the two centuries in which these 
two poets lived ! Each was a scholar in his tastes, and 
each was a poet who wrote not because he was a scholar 
and loved poetry, but because he knew himself possessed 
of the spark divine, and made his scholarship tributary 
to his poetry. But when Milton began to write, the sky 
was warm with the afterglow of the great Elizabethans ; 
when Gray came forward, the sky was lighted by the cold 
splendor of Pope's aurora. Milton passed quickly into the 
tempestuous period of the English civil war ; Gray dwelt 
in the placid days which seemed scarcely to know any 
change in the barometer presaging the storms which swept 
over Europe shortly after his death. 

And yet Gray, living apparently a timid life in the 
shelter of a university, and pleasing himself with literature, 
was one of the makers of English poetry. That is, he not 
only passed the torch along, but he fed it with new oil, so 
that the poets who followed him wrote better and differ- 
ently because of his influence. The details of his life are 
soon told ; the life of an unmarried scholar in times of 
peace has few adventures. His father, Philip Gray, who 
inherited a good fortune, was a shrewd man of business, 
but apparently a violent and not over kind person, with 



I 
I 





?^a^/ 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 349 

such prejudices against liberal education that the boy was 
in effect taken out of his hands by his mother and her 
family, and sent first to Eton to school and afterward to 
the University of Cambridge. 

At Eton, Gray formed a friendship which was to play a 
considerable part in his life. Horace Walpole, slightly his 
junior, was a schoolfellow, and Walpole came of a family 
which was in high favor at court and deep in political 
intrigues. He was himself to be a showy figure in English 
social life. In his Eton poem, Gray refers to the games of 
boys at school, but it is pretty clear that he himself was 
not a sturdy fellow, and even in schooldays cared more for 
his books than for his bat ; with Horace Walpole and two 
other congenial companions, he walked and sauntered about, 
playing with poetic fancies and carrying his studies into the 
hours for sport. To-day, Eton, though honoring athletics 
more than in Gray's time, knows what lustre a poet's name 
casts on the school where he was trained, and the boy who 
finishes his studies there is given a souvenir in the form of 
some copy of Gray's poems. 

It is not easy to understand the neglect which Gray 
suffered at the hands of his father. Mr. Gosse, who has 
written the most careful study of Gray's life, thinks that 
Philip Gray may have been half insane. The fact of more 
importance is that the poet's mother, out of her own earn- 
ings, — for with her sister she carried on a milliner's shop, 
— not only gave him his schooling at Eton, but maintained 
him at the University. Gray repaid this motherly love by 
a constant filial affection, and by repeating in his own life 
her patience and steadfastness and silent endurance. 

When his college days were over, Gray, like Milton, re- 
turned to his home ; he did not make so long a stay, how- 
ever, but like Milton set out for a journey on the Continent. 
He was more fortunate than his great predecessor. No 
upheaval of England called him back, and he spent three 
years in leisurely travel in France, Switzerland, and Italy. 



350 THOMAS GRAY. 

His companion was Horace Walpole ; indeed, it was at 
Walpole's instance and by his means that he went abroad, 
for the younger man had a generous passion for his friend, 
and not only wanted his companionship, but insisted on fur- 
nishing the common purse, while yet refusing to act as if he 
were conferring a favor. Some one has said that you 
never know the worst side of your friend till you have 
taken a voyage with him ; it is equally true that the best 
side of a person may be shown under the same condition. 
More confidently we may say that the intimate intercourse 
which springs from travel is quite sure to test the unselfish- 
ness of friendship. Near the end of their three years' tour. 
Gray and Walpole quarreled. Walpole said, when Gray 
was dead, that it was his fault ; Gray kept silence. They 
made up three years later, and maintained a form of friend- 
ship afterward, but their ways in life parted, and it was 
probably never easy to recover their old relations. The 
point to notice is that Gray never gave any intimation of 
the cause of the quarrel. His reserve was that of a man 
who has himself well in hand. 

The three years spent thus in travel are full of interest to 
the lover of Gray, because his writings both at the time 
and later show how fresh was his observation of what he 
saw, and how his experience quickened his judgment and 
broadened his sympathies. Three English poets, each in 
his way, were miore effectively English because of travel- 
experience early in life, — Milton, Gray, and Goldsmith. 
What especially distinguished Gray was the openness of his 
sight to the picturesque. It would seem strange to-day to 
call attention to a poet's delight in Swiss mountains, valleys, 
and glaciers ; every one knows that Swiss scenery is pictur- 
esque. But in a way Gray discovered all this for himself. 
In his time the Swiss mountains were called horrid, and 
the wild scenes which artists try to reproduce on canvas 
were repugnant to minds which had been bred to measure 
everything by the standards of decorous good taste. The 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 351 

fastidious lady who objected to rocks laid bare by the out- 
going tide because they looked untidy would have been at 
home in the middle of the eighteenth century, and her 
sentiments would have been applauded. 

Whether or not this capacity for seeing life indepen- 
dently would have been Gray's if he had always stayed at 
home, it certainly was enlarged by his travel abroad. He 
became, in a conventional age, a keen discriminator of 
beauty, and not only read his classics as everybody else 
did, but read them with a power to choose what was great 
and lasting, instead of accepting everything as equally fine 
because it was classic. He read Shakespeare also, as men 
of his day did not, for they thought him a half barbaric 
writer, and he was able to see the strength and passion in 
early English poetry and in Norse literature. In all these 
matters, Gray was apart from his own generation, an inde- 
pendent scholar and a man of genuine, not simply proper, 
taste. 

It may be asked why, if Gray had so clear a vision and 
so penetrative a scholarship, he did not express himself 
more fully in poetry, since poetry was his native form of 
expression. The whole of his contribution to English 
verse, printed by himself, could be got into a book of a 
hundred pages, and what was left over and collected by 
his friends would make not half as much again. Gray 
once wrote to Walpole : "As to what you say to me civ- 
illy, that I ought to write more, I will be candid and 
avow to you, that till fourscore and upwards, whenever 
the humor takes me, I will write ; because I like it, and 
because I like myself better when I do so. If I do not 
write much, it is because I cannot." That, perhaps, is as 
near as we can get to a simple answer. Gray knew him- 
self, and the critical faculty which was so strongly devel- 
oped in him was exercised on his own powers of production. 
He criticised his poetry before he wrote it, and therefore 
wrote little. If he had been passionate like Milton, his 



352 THOMAS GRAY. 

poetry would constantly have burst bounds. As it was, he 
led a still, reserved life, and when the spirit moved him to 
write poetry, he wrote. Besides, though he had one or two 
friends who were able to care for the same things that he 
did, he found people for the most part unable to take the 
same kind of pleasure in life and art, and so he was driven 
farther into his shell. 

Into the little poetry which he wrote Gray put a nature 
which was true, and by its careful training able to discrimi- 
nate between that which was poetic through and through, 
and that which was mere surface versification. In doing 
this he gave a great impetus to English verse. English 
poetry in the period before him was a bird shut up in a 
cage, and singing. Gray let the bird loose ; it was not quite 
the native warbler that it was when Burns sang, but its 
escape from the cage to the free air put new breath into its 
notes. 

When Gray was about twenty-five years of age, he went 
back to Cambridge to live. His father had died, and his 
mother and his sisters went into the country to a little vil- 
lage called Stoke Pogis, where they lived their lives out. 
At Cambridge he was in the midst of books which he eared 
for, and he could work quietly at his studies. There he 
lived for thirty years, occasionally going off on journeys in 
England, and spending part of his time in London near the 
British Museum, having a few devoted friends, reading, 
making notes on what he read, writing letters, and talking 
with those who could repay him with intelligence and affec- 
tionate appreciation. He shrank from publicity. There 
was besides his reserve a vein of timidity in his nature. 
For one thing he was terribly afraid of fire, and always 
kept a rope ladder in his room at college that he might 
escape if suddenly overtaken. He was a victim of gout, 
and suffered from ill-health all his days. Nevertheless, as 
his letters show, he had a playful temper, and thus, though 
he was out of keeping with much of his age, he is one of 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 353 

the distinct figures in it. He seems like a man with a can- 
dle out-of-doors in a windy night, carefully shielding the 
light. The light has burned on with a steady glow, and is 
likely to shed its kindly rays through many generations of 
lovers of English poetry. 



ELEGY, WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH- 
YARD. 

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

The significant title of this poem hints at the underly- 
ing theme, and accounts for the popularity which it has 
enjoyed from the start. If one considers that the great 
people of the parish were buried under the church itself, 
and the plain, mostly unlettered folk lay under the common 
turf outside, he will see that the poet here makes himself 
one of the undistinguished multitude. From the very first 
stanza Gray enlists the sympathy of all who toil, and at the 
same time leads the reader into that twilight land which is 
the home of reflective poetry. It would be interesting for 
one to read along with this poem Bryant's Thanatopsis, 
and see how in another way the American poet manages to 
connect death with nature. 

Gray, as has been pointed out, was a scholar, and at home 
in the great ancient classics as also in the English. Any 
one who chooses can find editions of the Elegy in which 
almost every line is referred to some other line of Greek, 
Latin, or English verse. To the casual reader of such an 
annotated edition, it would seeem as if the Elegy were a 
mere patchwork of other poets' phrases. More truly, Gray 
was so saturated with good poetry that when he wrote he 
used a language which had been formed on poetic reading ; 
probably in most cases, he was quite unconscious that he 
was drawing upon classic or contemporaneous phrases. 
Since he was, however, an ardent admirer of Milton, some 
of the coincidences between his verse and Milton's have 
been pointed out in the notes. 



I 



i 



vaJ^B- 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 355 

The notes, however, are of a purpose meagre. There is 
little that calls for explication. Yet the poem flows so 
limpicUy that its ease is a little deceptive. One may miss 
delicate tones by the simplicity of the language, but it has 
not seemed to the editor that it is the best use to which 
notes can be put when they are made to supply the reader 
with ready-made appreciation. He would add that in his 
judgment the best criticism would come through a memo- 
rizing of the poem, and the best annotation through a per- 
fect vocal rendering. 



ELEGY, WEITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH- 
YARD. 

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, 

The plowman homeward plods his weary way, 
And leaves the world to darkness and to me. 

5 Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, 
And all the air a solemn stillness holds, 
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, 
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds ; 

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r, 
10 The moping owl does to the moon complain 
Of such as, wand' ring near her secret bow'r, 
Molest her ancient solitary reign. 

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade. 
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap, 
15 Each in his narrow cell forever laid, 

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn, 

The swallow twitt'ringfrom the straw-built shed, 

1. Parthig. Compare line 4 of Goldsmith's The Deserted VU- 
lage. 

12. Reign, realm. 



ELEGY. 357 

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, 
20 No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 
Or busy housewife ply her evening care ; 

No children run to lisp their sire's return, 
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. 

25 Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, 

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke ; 
How jocund did they drive their team afield ! 

How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke ! 

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, 
30 Their homely joys, and destiny obscure ; 
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 
The short and simple annals of the poor. 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r. 
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 
35 Await alike th' inevitable hour. 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 

27. Drive their team afield. See Milton's Lycidas, line 27. 

36. " For two full hours the procession of boats, borne on the 
current, steered silently down the St. Lawrence. The stars were 
visible, but the night was moonless and sufficiently dark. The 
general was in one of the foremost boats, and near him was a 
young midshipman, John Robison, afterwards* prof essor of natu- 
ral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. He used to tell 
in his later life how Wolfe, with a low voice, repeated Gray's 
Elegy in a Country Church-yard to the officers about him. Prob- 
ably it was to relieve the intense strain of his thoughts. Among 
the rest was the verse which his own fate was soon to illus- 
trate, — 

" ' The paths of glory lead but to the grave.* 



358 THOMAS GRAY. 

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, 

If Mem'ry o'er their tomb no trophies raise, 
Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault 
40 The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. 

Can storied urn, or animated bust, 

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath ? 

Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, 
Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of death ? 

45 Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire, 
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd, 
Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre. 

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page 
50 Bich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll ; 
Chill Penury repress'd. their noble rage. 
And froze the genial current of the soul. 

Full many a gem of purest ray serene 

The dark unf athom'd caves of ocean bear ; 
56 Full many a flower is born to blush unseen. 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast 
The little Tyrant of his fields withstood, 

* Gentlemen,' he said, as his recital ended, * I would rather 
have written those lines than take Quebec.' None were there to 
tell him that the hero is greater than the poet." Parkman's 
Montcalm and Wolfe^ ii. 285. 

40. Pealing. See II Penseroso, 161. 

41. Storied. See II Penseroso, 159. 

51. Rage is not anger, but, as we say the fire raged, so here 
rage is kindled spirit. 



J 



ELEGY. 359 

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, 
60 Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. 

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command, 
The threats of pain and ruin to despise. 

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, 

And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes, 

65 Their lot forbade : nor circumscrib'd alone 

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd ; 
Forbade to wade thro' slaughter to a throne. 
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind ; 

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, 
70 To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame. 
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride 
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. 

60. In an early form of his poem, Gray wrote : — 

" Some village Cato, who, with dauntless breast 
The little Tyrant of his fields withstood, 
Some mute inglorious TuUy here may rest, 
Some Caesar guiltless of his country's blood." 

Gray was, as we have said, a scholar and a very delicate one, 
and he stepped into this form naturally ; but he was also an Eng- 
lishman keenly interested even in the antiquities of England, 
and the change he made w,as not only in accordance with his 
more deliberate judgment, it was a sign that English literature 
was on its way out of academic inclosures ; no one did more to 
set it free than Gray, with his own strong academic taste. 

72. After this verse, in Gray's first MS. of the poem, were the 
four following stanzas : — 

" The thoughtless world to majesty may bow, 
Exalt the brave, and idolize success ; 
But more to innocence their safety owe, 
Than pow'r or genius e'er conspired to bless. 

•' And thou who mindful of th' unhonour'd dead 
Dost in these notes their artless tale relate, 



360 THOMAS GRAY. 

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, 
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray ; 
75 Along the cool sequester 'd vale of life 

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. 

Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect 

Some frail memorial still erected nigh, 
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd 
80 Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd Muse, 
The place of fame and elegy supply ; 

And many a holy text around she strews. 
That teach the rustic moralist to die. 

85 For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey. 
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd. 
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, 
Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind ? 

By night and lonely contemplation led 
To wander in the gloomy walks of fate : 

"Hark, how the sacred calm, that breathes around, 
Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease : 
In still small accents whisp'ring from the ground, 
A grateful earnest of eternal peace. 

"No more, with reason and thyself at strife, 
Give anxious cares and endless wishes room ; 
But through the cool sequester'd vale of life 
Pursue the silent tenour of thy doom." 

And here the poen.i was originally intended to conclude. 
Though he discarded the verses, Gray retained some of the 
phrases for use in the following stanzas. 

77. These hones. Gray has the whole scene so vividly in mind, 
from the first intimation in line 16, that these comes simply and 
naturally to him. 

85. To dumb Forgetfulness a prey. There has been some 



ELEGY. 361 

On some fond breast the parting soul relies, 
90 Some pious drops the closing eye requires ; 
Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, 
Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires. 

For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonour'd dead, 
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate ; 
95 If chance, by lonely Contemplation led. 

Some kindred spirit shall enquire thy fate, — 

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, 

" Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn 
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, 
100 To meet the sun upon the upland lawn : 

" There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, 
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so hisfh. 

His listless length at noontide would he stretch, 
And pore upon the brook that babbles by. 

105 " Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, 
Mutt' ring his wayward fancies he would rove ; 
Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn. 
Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love. 

" One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill, 

no Along the heath, and near his f av'rite tree ; 

Another came ; nor yet beside the rill, 

Nor uj) the lawn, nor at the wood was he ; 

discussion over this stanza, but if these words are interpreted as 
meaning that the departing soul overtaken by death knows that 
he is to become dumb, and loses all memory, then the rest fol- 
lows naturally. 

99. See Paradise Lost, v. 429. 

111. Another, i. e., day. 



362 THOMAS GRAY. 

" The next, with dirges due in sad array, 

Slow through the church-way path we saw him 
borne : — 
115 Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay 
Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn." 

THE EPITAPH. 

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth, 

A youth, to Fortune and to Fame unknown : 
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth, 
120 And Melancholy mark'd him for her own. 

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, 
Heav'n did a recompense as largely send ; 

He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear. 

He gain'd from Heav'n ('t was all he wish'd) a 
friend. 

125 No farther seek his merits to disclose, 

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, 
(There they alike in trembling hope repose,) 
The bosom of his Father and his God. 

116. "Before the Epitaph," says Mason, "Gray originally in- 
serted a very beautiful stanza, which was printed in some of the 
first editions, but afterwards omitted, because he thought that it 
was too long a parenthesis in this place. The lines, however, 
are in themselves exquisitely fine, and demand preservation : — 

" * There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, 

By hands unseen are show'rs of violets found ; 
The redbreast loves to build and warble there, 
And little footsteps lightly print the ground."* 



ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE. 

'AvdpwTTOs, iKau^ irp6(paai,5 els rh Bvcrrvx^^v- 

Menandeb- 

Ye distant spires, ye antique towers, 

That crown the wat'ry glade, 
Where grateful Science still adores 

Her Henry's holy shade ; 
5 And ye, that from the stately brow 
Of Windsor's heights tli' expanse below 

Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey. 
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among 
Wanders the hoary Thames along 
10 His silver-winding way : 

Ah, happy hills ! ah, pleasing shade I 

Ah, fields belov'd in vain ! 
Wbere once my careless childhood stray'd, 

A stranger yet to pain ! 
15 1 feel the gales that from ye blow 
A momentary bliss bestow, 

As waving fresli their gladsome wing 
My weary soul they seem to soothe. 

The motto, from Menander, a Greek writer of comedies in 
the fourth century before Christ, but whose writing-s have come 
down to us in fragments or in adaptations for the Roman stage, 
may be read in English : " To be a man is reason enough to 
expect ill-fortune." 

4. Henry VI., whom Shakespeare calls Holy King Henry, 
founded Eton College. 



364 THOMAS GRAY. 

And, redolent of joy and youth, 
20 To breathe a second spring. 

Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen 
Full many a sprightly race 

Disporting on thy margent green, 

The paths of pleasure trace ; 

25 Who foremost now delight to cleave 

With pliant arm thy glassy wave ? 
The captive linnet which enthral? 

What idle progeny succeed 

To chase the rolling circle's speed, 



30 Or urge the flying ball 



? 



While some on earnest business bent 

Their murm'ring labours ply 
'Gainst graver hours that bring constraint 
To sweeten liberty : 
35 Some bold adventurers disdain 
The limits of their little reign, 

And unknown regions dare descry : 
Still as they run they look behind, 
They hear a voice in every wind, 
40 And snatch a fearful joy. 

Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed. 

Less pleasing when possest ; 
The tear forgot as soon as shed, 

21. Say, Father Thames. It should be remembered that Gray 
is writing an ode, and the formal dignity which belongs to that 
order of composition permits an address which otherwise might 
seem pompous. 

23. Margent green. See Milton's Comus, 232. 

36. Reign. See note on the Elegy, line 12. 

40. Snatch in Gray's time had not the grotesque notion it now 
carries. 



DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE. 365 

The sunsliine of the breast : 
45 Theirs buxom health of rosy hue, 
Wild wit, invention ever new, 

And lively cheer of vigour born ; 
The thoughtless day, the easy night, 
The spirits pure, the slumbers light, 
60 That fly th' approach of morn. 

Alas ! regardless of their doom. 

The little victims play ; 
No sense have they of ills to come. 

Nor care beyond to-day : 
55 Yet see, how all around 'em wait 
The ministers of human fate. 

And black Misfortune's baleful train ! 
Ah, shew them where in ambush stand, 
To seize their prey, the murth'rous band ! 
60 Ah, tell them, they are men ! 

These shall the fury Passions tear, 

The vultures of the mind. 
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear, 

And Shame that skulks behind ; 
65 Or pining Love shall waste their youth, 
Or Jealousy with rankling tooth 

That inly gnaws the secret heart ; 
And Envy wan, and faded Care, 
Grim-visag'd comfortless Despair, 
70 And Sorrow's piercing dart. 

Ambition this shall tempt to rise. 
Then whirl the wretch from high, 

60. Men ; and therefore doomed to ill-fortune, as in the motto. 

61. The murth^rous hand in the next twenty lines is resolved 
into its members. 



366 THOMAS GRAY. 

To bitter Scorn a sacrifice, 
And grinning Infamy. 
75 The stings of Falsehood those shall try, 
And hard Unkindness' alter'd eye, 

That mocks the tear it f orc'd to flow ; 
And keen Remorse with blood defil'd, 
And moody Madness laughing wild 
80 Amid severest woe. 

Lo ! in the vale of years beneath 

A grisly troop are seen. 
The painful family of Death, 

More hideous than their queen : 
85 This racks the joints, this fires the veins, 
That every labouring sinew strains. 

Those in the deeper vitals rage : 
Lo ! Poverty, to fill the band, 
That numbs the soul with icy hand, 
90 And slow-consuming Age. 

To each his suff'rings : all are men, 

Condemn'd alike to groan ; 
The tender for another's pain, 

Th' unfeeling for his own. 
95 Yet, ah ! why should they know their fate, 
Since sorrow never comes too late. 

And happiness too swiftly flies ? 
Thought would destroy their paradise. 
No more ; — where ignorance is bliss, 
100 'T is folly to be wise. 

81. As the band stood in ambush, so these later enemies are 
down below in the valley whither the Etonians are to descend. 

86. It is worth while to read this line slowly to note why Gray 
used the words he did. 




i?€cr^ y^ 



?7hC^. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

Oliver Goldsmith, a son of a humble village preacher, 
was born at the parsonage in Pallas, the property of the 
Edgeworths of Edgeworthstown, in the county of Long- 
ford, Ireland, November 10, 1728. He died in London, 
wept over by Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, and Garrick, 
April 4, 1774, five months over his forty-fifth year. Be- 
tween the obscure Irish village birthplace and the monu- 
ment in Westminster Abbey stretched a career which was 
half in clouds and half in sunshine, a rainbow of tears and 
smiles. He had no advantages of birth other than the 
priceless one of a simple-hearted father, " jDassing rich 
with forty pounds a year," who lives again in the preacher 
of the Deserted Village, and more minutely in the hero 
of the Vicar of Wakfield. His life, to outward seem- 
ing, was a series of blunders. He was tossed about from 
one school to another, learning many things which some- 
how seem more in his life than Latin or Greek. He 
learned to play the flute, and he fell in love with vagrancy, 
or rather the vagrant in him was carefully nourished by an 
unworldly, unsophisticated father, a merry-andrew of a 
teacher, and by fickle Fortune herself. An uncle, the 
Rev. Mr. Contarine, was the prudent man of the family, 
always appearing as the necessary counterpoise to prevent 
Oliver from flying off into irrecoverable wandering. By 
his advice and help the lad passed from his schools to 
Trinity College, Dublin, perhaps a needful discipline, but 



868 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

certainly a harsh one ; for there, where one might look for 
genial surroundings to one afterward to become a master in 
literature, the luckless youth was to find new trials to his 
sensitive spirit, and to have his compensation in pleasures 
quite unprovided in the college scheme. His poverty com- 
pelled him to take a menial position, he had a brutal tutor, 
and after he had been a year and a half at college his father 
died, leaving him in still more abject poverty than before. 
He wrote street ballads to save himself from actual starva- 
tion, and sold them for five shillings apiece. In all this 
murky gloom the lights that twinkle are the secret joy with 
which the poor poet would steal out at night to hear his 
ballads sung, and the quick rush of feeling in which he 
would use his five shillings upon some forlorn beggar, 
whose misery made him forget his own. Once he ran 
away from college, stung by some too sharp insult from his 
tutor, but he returned to take his degree, and at the end of 
three years, carrying away some scraps of learning, he re- 
turned to his mother's house. 

There for two years he led an aimless, happy life, wait- 
ing for the necessary age at which he could qualify for 
orders in the church. He had few wants, and gayly shared 
the little family's small stock of provision and joint labors, 
teaching in the village school, fishing, strolling, flute-play- 
ing, and dancing. They were two years that made his 
Irish home always green in his memory, a spot almost 
dazzling for brightness when he looked back on it from the 
hardships of his London life. When the two years were 
passed, he applied to the Bishop for orders, but was rejected 
for various reasons according to various authorities, but the 
most sufiicient one in any case was his own unwillingness 
to take the step urged upon him by friends. He was 
sent by his uncle to begin the study of law, but the fifty 
pounds with which he was furnished were lost at play, and 
the vagabond returned forgiven to his uncle's house. He 
had visions of coming to America which fortunately never 



i 



I 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 369 

passed into waking resolution, for it is to be feared there 
would have been small likelihood of his blossoming into 
literature on this side of the water in the days of ante- 
Revolutionary flatness. 

Medicine was the next resort, and Goldsmith was sent by 
his uncle to Edinburgh. Although the title of doctor has 
become familiarly connected with his name, it is very cer- 
tain that he did not acquire the degree in Edinburgh, but 
afterward in a foreign university upon one of his wander- 
ings. Few traditions remain of his life at Edinburgh ; 
three or four amusing letters were written thence, but the 
impression made by them and by such gossip as survives is 
that he was an inimitable teller of humorous stories and a 
capital singer of Irish songs. His profession of medicine, 
however, gave a show of consistency to his purpose of travel 
on the Continent, where he persuaded himself and his 
friends that he should qualify himself for his professional 
degree. In point of fact he spent his time in a happy-go- 
lucky fashion, wandering from place to place, and singing 
a song for a sixpence. 

He returned to England in 1756, after two years of desul- 
tory life on the Continent, and landed, we are told, without 
a farthing in his pockets. He lived by hook and by crook, 
serving in an apothecary's shop in a humble capacity, acting 
as tutor, it is said, under a feigned name, and living the 
while, as he afterward declared, among beggars. Then, 
falling in with an old friend, and getting some little 
assistance, for Goldsmith seemed always one of the open- 
handed, ready to receive and ready to bestow, he became a 
physician in a humble way, struggling for a living in doc- 
toring those only one degree richer than himself. By a 
curious coincidence, one of his patients was a printer work- 
ing under Samuel Richardson, printer, and, what is more, 
author of Clarissa. From a hint given by this man, 
Goldsmith applied to Richardson and was given occupation 
as a proof-reader. Then, falling in with an old schoolfel- 



370 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

low whose father kept a school in Peckham, Goldsmith be- 
came an usher, and a miserable time he had of it. Grif- 
fiths, the bookseller, dined one day at the school where 
Goldsmith was usher. The conversation turned upon the 
Monthly Review, owned and conducted by Griffiths. 
Something said by Goldsmith led to further consideration, 
and the usher left the school to board and lodge with the 
bookseller, to have a small regular salary, and to devote 
himself to the Monthly Review. 

The history of literature at this time in England gives 
much space necessarily to the bookseller. In the transition 
period of authorship, this middleman occupied a position of 
power and authority not since accorded to him ; it was a 
singular relation which the drudging author held to his 
employer, and Goldsmith from this time forward was 
scarcely ever free from a dependence upon the autocrats of 
the book trade. He entered the profession of literature as 
upon something which was a little more profitable and cer- 
tainly more agreeable than the occupation of an usher in a 
boarding-school, or the profession of a doctor without pay- 
ing clients. A profession which now dignifies its members 
was then without respect socially, and attended by all the 
meanness which springs from a false position. The rich 
and powerful in government looked upon it as appointed 
only to serve the ends of the ambitious, and the poor au- 
thor had to struggle to maintain his independence of nature. 
The men who could sell their talents and their self-respect 
for gold and place jostled roughly their nobler comrades 
who served literature faithfully in poverty, and it was only 
now and then that the fickle breath of popular favor wafted 
some author's book into warmer waters. So crowding was 
this Grub Street life that Goldsmith sought release from 
it in a vain attempt after a government appointment as 
medical officer at Coromandel. He was driven back into 
the galleys from which he was striving to escape, yet out 
of this life there began to issue the true products of his 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 371 

genius. He brooded over his own and his fellows' condi- 
tion. Something within him made protest against the igno- 
ble state of literature, and he wrote the first book which 
gave him a name, — An Enquiry into the Present State 
of Polite Learning in Europe. The subject was wrung 
from his fortunes, but the style was the music which he 
had never failed to hear from boyhood. Style, bred of no 
special study at Trinity College, nor too closely allied with 
learning, but a gift of nature, guarded well and cherished 
by the varying fortune which was moulding his mind in the 
secret fashion that makes a genuine surprise when discov- 
ered : this was seen in his book, and justified his place in 
the great profession of authorship. There is in Goldsmith's 
life, as in Andersen's, and in that of many a man of genius, 
the sad, sweet story of the Ugly Duckling. Pecked at and 
scorned by meaner associates, conscious of disadvantages 
and of inferiority in inferior things, a divine ray of hope and 
longing never left him ; and when at last he gave outward 
expression to the genius in him, he found himself amongst 
his true fellows, recognized by men of genius as their 
associate. From this time forward Goldsmith knew his 
place and took it. He was thirty-one years of age, and in 
the remainder of his life he wrote his essays in The Bee 
and The Citizen of the World ; The Vicar of Wakefield, 
The Traveller, The Deserted Village, his shorter poems, 
and the two comedies, A Good-Natured Man, and She 
Stoops to Conquer, In quantity not a large showing, but 
glistening with that pure fancy and happy temper which 
are among the choicest gifts of literature to a tired world. 
These are his works which give him his place in literature, 
but during the time when they were composed he was con- 
stantly at work upon tasks. He wrote his histories of 
England and Rome, and his Animated Nature, which, de- 
spite its unscientific cast, is a storehouse of delightful read- 
ing ; and he wrote reviews, essays, prefaces, translations, 
and the like, quite beyond record. 



372 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Yet all this time he was in debt. He did not want be- 
cause his work was ill paid or he was not industrious, but 
because his money slipped through his fingers, too volatile 
to hold it fast. Some of it went upon his back in the odd 
finery which has stuck to his reputation, but a large share 
went to the poor and miserable. Look at the poor man 
lying dead in his solitary chamber. " The staircase of 
Birch Court is said to have been filled with mourners, 
the reverse of domestic : women without a home, without 
domesticity of any kind, with no friend but him they had 
come to weep for, outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked 
city, to whom he had never forgotten to be kind and char- 
itable." 1 

^ Forster's The Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith, ii. 467. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

The Deserted Village was not Goldsmith's first consid- 
erable poem ; that was The Traveller^ published five or six 
years earlier ; but it is the production which has endeared 
him most to readers, and it is in form and content one 
of the most melodious and at the same time thoughtful 
poems in the English language. Its foundations are laid 
deep in human nature, for it is at once the reflection of 
a man upon the beginning of his life, and the return in 
thought of one who has seen much of the world to those 
simple delights which are most elemental, least dependent 
upon the conventions of complex society. The poem is, 
besides, the contribution of an earnest thinker toward the 
solution of great national and social problems. Goldsmith 
had already shown in The Traveller not only that he was 
a clear-sighted observer of scenes in various lands and 
an interpreter of national characteristics, but that his mind 
had been at work on the great question of what constitutes 
the real prosperity of nations. In this poem he returns to 
the subject and makes his thought still more luminous by 
drawing a contrast between two separate conditions in the 
same nation, rather than instituting a comparison among 
several nations. 

Never was the truth of literary art, that the greatest 
success is attained when form and content are inseparably 
joined, better exemplified than in The Deserted Village. 
Here is serious thought, but it is presented in such exquisite 
language, it is illustrated by such a series of charming 
pictures, that one scarcely perceives at first the solidity of 



374 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

the structure of the poem. A great contemporary of Gold- 
smith's, Dr. Samuel Johnson, wrote a sonorous and thought- 
ful poem called The Vanity of Human Wishes, but 
though it was greatly and justly praised at the time, it has 
failed to fasten itself on the affection of readers for lack of 
that translucent beauty of form which has preserved The 
Deserted Village and The Traveller. 

For Goldsmith was preeminently a poet ; in his travels 
he saw into the soul of things ; in his reflection he pene- 
trated beneath the surface ; and in his expression, both as 
regards words, phrases, and construction, he had the intu- 
itive sense which chose the right word, gave music to his 
phrase, and made the whole poem a work of art. This 
poem, therefore, like any great imaginative piece, must not 
be examined too closely for an identity with prosaic fact. 
There is a likeness, unquestionably, between Sweet Auburn 
and Lissoy, the village where Goldsmith passed his child- 
hood ; the portrait of the village preacher might readily 
be taken for a sketch either of Goldsmith's father or his 
brother Henry ; enthusiastic investigators even give the 
actual name of the 

'' wretched matron, forced in age, for bread, 
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread ; " 

but one must never forget, if he would enter most com- 
pletely into the poet's way of looking at life, that all these 
facts of experience are transmuted into vivid images, crea- 
tions of the poet's mind out of material afforded him by 
memory and observation. 

The reader of the poem, as well as of Goldsmith's verse 
in general, if he is unfamiliar with any other than nine- 
teenth-century poetry, will very likely be puzzled by the use 
of words in senses unfamiliar. Some of these uses are 
pointed out in the notes, but many more will be learned by 
recourse to a good dictionary. Next to a reading of the 
poem for delight comes the scrutiny of the language, and 
the reader is advised to look closely at the words, since in 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 375 

many instances an apparent meaning will be found to be 
more modern ; the real meaning to be an historical one, 
familiar to Goldsmith, but antiquated now. Indeed, in 
some respects Goldsmith's language is more likely to be 
misinterpreted than Shakespeare's. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 

Sweet Auburn ! loveliest village of the plain, 
Wliere health and plenty cheer 'd the laboring 

swain, 
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid. 
And parting summer's lingering blooms delay'd ; 

5 Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease. 
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, 
How often have I loiter 'd o'er thy green. 
Where humble happiness endear'd each scene ! 
How often have I paus'd on every charm, 

10 The shelter'd cot, the cultivated farm,' 
The never-failing brook, the busy mill. 
The decent church that topt the neighboring hill, 
The hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade, 
For talking age and whispering lovers made ! 

15 How often have I blest the coming day, 
When toil remitting lent its turn to play, 
And all the village train, from labor free^ 
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree ; 
While many a pastime circled in the shade, 

20 The young contending as the old survey'd ; 

4. Parting, i. e., departing, mucli as we use the phrase "to part 
with." Here summer parts with us. 

12. Decent. Following its Latin origin, the word was most 
commonly used in the eighteenth century in its sense of becom- 
ing, fit. 

19. Circled. See an equivalent phrase in line 22. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 377 

And many a gambol frolick'd o'er the ground, 

And sleights of art and feats of strength went 
round ; 

And still, as each repeated pleasure tir'd. 

Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspir'd ; 
25 The dancing pair that simply sought renown. 

By holding out, to tire each other down ; 

The swain mistrustless of his smutted face, 

While secret laughter titter'd round the place ; 

The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love, 
30 The matron's glance that would those looks re- 
prove : 

These were thy charms, sweet village ! sports like 
these. 

With sweet succession, taught e'en toil to please ; 

These round thy bowers their cheerful influence 
shed. 

These were thy charms, — but all these charms are 
fled. 

35 Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn ! 
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn ; 
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen, 
And desolation saddens all thy green : 
One only master grasps the whole domain, 

40 And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain. 
No more thy glassy brook reflects the day. 
But chok'd with sedges works its weedy way ; 

27. The rude sports of the village no doubt survive in English 
country life ; any one who reads the chapter A London Suburb in 
Hawthorne's Our Old Home will recognize a likeness between 
Greenwich Fair as Hawthorne saw it and the Sweet Auburn of 
Goldsmith's recollection. And American readers could supply 
from boyish pranks the explanation of 

" The swain mistrustless of his smutted face." 



378 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Along thy glades, a solitary guest, 

The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest ; 

45 Amidst thy desert- walks the lapwing flies. 
And tires their echoes with unvaried cries. 
Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all. 
And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall ; 
And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand, 

50 Far, far away thy children leave the land. 

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay ; 
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade : 
A breath can make them, as a breath has made : 
65 But a bold peasantry, their country's pride. 
When once destroy'd, can never be supplied. 

A time there was, ere England's griefs began, 
When every rood of ground maintain'd its man ; 
For him light labor spread her wholesome store, 
60 Just gave what life requir'd, but gave no more ; 
His best companions, innocence and health ; 
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth. 

But times are alter'd ; trade's unfeeling train 
Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain ; 

44. In his Animated Nature, which is a book of descriptive 
natural history, Goldsmith uses the same term to characterize 
the bittern. " Of all these sounds," he says, " there is none so dis- 
mally hollow as the booming of the bittern. ... I remember in 
the place where I was a boy, with what terror this bird's note 
affected the whole village." 

52. Goldsmith wrote earnestly and at some length on this 
theme in the nineteenth chapter of The Vicar of Wakefield. 

63. The plural idea in train was uppermost in Goldsmith's 
mind, so that he uses the plural form in the verbs in the next line. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 379 

65 Along the lawn, where scatter'd hamlets rose, 
Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose; 
And every want to opulence allied, 
And every pang that folly pays to pride. 
Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom, 
70 Those calm desires that ask'd but little room, 

Those healthful sports that grac'd the peaceful 

scene, 
Liv'd in each look, and brightened all the green : 
These, far departing, seek a kinder shore. 
And rural mirth and manners are no more. 

75 Sweet Auburn ! parent of the blissful hour, 
Thy glades forlorn confess the tyrant's power. 
Here, as I take my solitary rounds 
Amidst thy tangling walks and ruin'd grounds, 
And, many a year elaps'd, return to view 

80 Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew, 
Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train. 
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain. 

In all my wanderings round this world of care, 

In all my griefs — and God has given my share — 
85 I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, 

Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ; 

To husband out life's taper at the close, 

And keep the flame from wasting by repose ; 

I still had hopes — for pride attends us still — 
90 Amidst the swains to show my book-learn'd skill, 

Around my fire an evening group to draw. 

And tell of all I felt, and all I saw ; 

And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue, 

74. Manners has here the meaning of customs rather than be- 
havior. 



380 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Pants to the place from v/lience at first she flew, 
95 1 still had hopes, my long vexations past, 
Here to retnrn, — and die at home at last. 

O blest retirement I friend to life's decline, 
Retreat from care, that never must be mine. 
How blest is he who crowns in shades like these 

100 A youth of labor with an age of ease ; 

Who quits a world where strong temptations try, 
And, since 't is hard to combat, learns to fly ! 
For him no wretches, born to work and weep, 
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep 5 

105 No surly porter stands in guilty state. 
To spurn imploring famine from the gate : 
But on he moves to meet his latter end. 
Angels around befriending virtue's friend ; 
Bends to the grave with unperceiv'd decay, 

no While resignation gently slopes the way ; 
And, all his prospects brightening to the last. 
His heaven commences ere the world be past. 

Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close 
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose. 

115 There, as I pass'd with careless steps and slow, 
The mingling notes came soften'd from below : 
The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung. 
The sober herd that low'd to meet their young; 
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool ; 

120 The playful children just let loose from school ; 

101. Goldsmith, writing one may say almost as a journalist, 
gave little heed to possible repetitions of his phrases, and in The 
Bee he wrote : " By struggling with misfortunes, we are sure to 
receive some wound in the conflict : the only method to come 
off victorious is by running away," 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. -381 

The watcli-dog's voice that bay'd the whispermg 

wind, 
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind : 
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, 
And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made. 

125 But now the sounds of population fail. 
No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale. 
No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread, 
But all the bloomy flush of life is fled. 
All but yon widow'd, solitary thing 

130 That feebly bends beside the plashy spring ; 
She, wretched matron, — f orc'd in age, for bread, 
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, 
To pick her wintry fagot from the thorn, 
To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn — 

135 She only left of all the harmless train. 
The sad historian of the pensive plain. 

Near yonder copse, where once the garden smil'd, 
And still where many a garden flower grows wild. 
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, 
140 The village preacher's modest mansion rose. 
A man he was to all the country dear. 
And passing rich with forty pounds a year. 

121. " I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon, than such a 
Roman." — Shakespeare, Julius Coesar, Act iv. Scene iii. i. 27. 

124. Again in his Animated Nature, Goldsmith says ; " The 
nightingale's pausing song would be the proper epithet for this 
bird's music." 

141. One needs but to read Goldsmith's dedication of The 
Traveller to see how closely he copied from life in drawing this 
portrait of the village preacher. Goldsmith's use of " passing " 
is as Shakespeare's 

" She swore, in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange." 

Othello, Act I. Scene iii, 1. 160. 



882 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Remote from towns he ran his godly race, 

Nor e'er had chang'd, nor wish'd to change, his place ; 
145 Unpractis'd he to fawn, or seek for power, 

By doctrines fashion'd to the varying hour ; 

Far other aims his heart had learn'd to prize, 

More skill' d to raise the wretched than to rise. 

His house was known to all the vagrant .train, 
150 He chid their wanderings, but reliev'd their pain; 

The long-remember' d beggar was his guest. 

Whose beard descending swept his aged breast ; 

The ruin'd spendthrift, now no longer proud, 

Claim'd kindred there, and had his claims allow'd ; 
155 The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, 

Sate by his fire, and talk'd the night away ; 

Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done, 

Shoulder'd his crutch, and shew'd how fields were 
won. 

Pleas'd with his guests, the good man learn'd to 
glow, 
160 And quite forgot their vices in their woe ; 

Careless their merits or their faults to scan, 

His pity gave ere charity began. 

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, 
And e'en his failings lean'd to virtue's side : 

165 But in his duty prompt at every call. 

He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all. 
And as a bird each fond endearment tries 
To tempt its new-fledg'd offspring to the skies, 
He tried each art, reprov'd each dull delay, 

170 AUur'd to brighter worlds, and led the way. 

Beside the bed where parting life was laid, 
And sorrow, guilt, and pain, by turns dismay'd, 
171, See note on line 4. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 388 

The reverend champion stood. At his control, 
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul ; 
175 Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise, 
And his last faltering accents whisper'd praise. 

At church, with meek and unaffected grace, 
His looks adorn' d the venerable place ; 
Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, 
180 And fools, who came to scoff, remain'd to pray. 
The service past, around the pious man. 
With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran ; 
Even children follow'd, with endearing wile, 
And pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's 
smile. 
135 His ready smile a parent's warmth exprest, 

Their welfare pleas'd him, and their cares distrest ; 
To them his heart, his love, his griefs, were given, 
But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven : 
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 
190 Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are 

spread. 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head. 

Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way 
With blossom'd furze unprofitably gay, 

195 There, in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule. 
The village master taught his little school. 
A man severe he was, and stern to view ; 
I knew him well, and every truant knew : 
Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace 

200 The day's disasters in his morning face ; 

Full well they laugh'd, with counterfeited glee, 
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he ; 



384 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Full v/ell the busy whisper, circling round, 

Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd. 
•205 Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, 

The love he bore to learning was in fault. 

The village all declar'd how much he knew ; 

'T was certain he could write, and cipher too ; 

Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, 
210 And even the story ran that he could gauge ; 

In arguing, too, the parson own'd his skill, 

For even though vanquish'd he could argue still ; 

While words of learned length and thundering 
sound 

Amaz'd the gazing rustics rang'd around ; 
215 And still they gaz'd, and still the wonder grew 

That one small head could carry all he knew. 

But past is all his fame. The very spot, 
Where many a time he triumph'd, is forgot. 
Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high, 
220 Where once the sign-post caught the passing eye, 
Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts in- 

spir'd, 
Where gray-beard mirth and smiling toil retir'd. 
Where village statesmen talk'd with looks pro- 
found. 
And news much older than their ale went round. 
225 Imagination fondly stoops to trace 

209. The terms were sessions of law courts and universities. 
The tides were times and seasons, especially in the ecclesias- 
tical year. He could tell when Eastertide, for instance, would 
come. 

210. A gauger is in some places a sworn officer, whose duty 
it is to measure the contents of hogsheads, barrels, or casks. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 385 

The parlor splendors of that festive place : 
The whitewash'd wall, the nicely sanded floor, 
The varnish'd clock that click'd behind the door ; 
The chest contriv'd a double debt to pay, 

230 A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day ; 
The pictures plac'd for ornament and use, 
The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose ; 
The hearth, except when winter chill'd the day, 
With aspen boughs, and flowers, and fennel gay, 

235 While broken teacups, wisely kept for show, 
Kang'd o'er the chimney, glisten 'd in a row. 

Yain, transitory splendors ! could not all 
Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall? 
Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart 

240 An hour's importance to the poor man's heart. 
Thither no more the peasant shall repair 
To sweet oblivion of his daily care ; 
No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale, 
No more the woodman's ballad shall prevail ; 

245 No more the smith his dusky brow sliall clear, 
Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear ; 
The host himself no longer shall be found 
Careful to see the mantling bliss go round ; 

226-236. The first form of this description will be found in 
the verses given later, page SS. 

232. The twelve rules ascribed to Charles I. were : 1. Urge no 
healths. 2. Profane no divine ordinances. 3. Touch no state 
matters. 4. Reveal no secrets. 5. Pick no quarrels. 6. Make 
no companions. 7. Maintain no ill opinions. 8. Keep no bad 
company. 9. Encourage no vice. 10. Make no long meal. 11. 
Repeat no grievances. 12. Lay no wagers. The royal game of 
goose was a species of checkers. 

244. Woodman's ; that is, a man versed in woodcraft, as a 
hunter, not necessarily a wood-chopper. 



386 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Nor the coy maid, half willing to be prest, 
250 Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest. 

Yes I let the rich deride, the proud disdain. 
These simple blessings of the lowly train ; 
To me more dear, congenial to my heart, 
One native charm, than all the gloss of art. 

255 Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, 
The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway ; 
Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, 
Unenvied, unmolested, unconfin'd. 
But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade, 

260 With all the freaks of wanton wealth array'd, — 
In these, ere triflers haK their wish obtain. 
The toiling pleasure sickens into pain ; 
And even while fashion's brightest arts decoy, 
The heart, distrusting, ask if this be joy. 

265 Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen, who survey 
The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay, 
'T is yours to judge how wide the limits stand 
Between a splendid and a happy land. 
Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore, 

270 And shouting Folly hails them from her shore ; 
Hoards e'en beyond the miser's wish abound. 
And rich men flock from all the world around. 

250. To hiss the cup was to touch it with the lips before pass- 
ing. Ben Jonson's well-known verses to Celia begin : — 

" Drink to me only with thine eyes, 
And I will pledjje witli mine ; 
Or leave a kiss bnt in the cup, 
And I Ul not look for wine." 

268. Goldsmith says a similar thing in the Citizen of the 
World, when he makes the sententious remark : " There is a 
wide difference between a conquering and a flourishing empire." 



I 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 387 

Yet count cur gains : this wealth is but a name, 
That leaves our useful products still the same. 

275 Not so tlie loss. The man of wealth and pride 
Takes up a space that many poor supplied ; 
Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, 
Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds : 
The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth 

280 Has robb'd the neighboring fields of half their 
growth ; 
His seat, where solitary sports are seen. 
Indignant spurns the cottage from the green ; 
Around the world each needful product flies, 
For all the luxuries the world supplies. 

285 While thus the land, adorn'd for pleasure, all 
In barren splendor feebly waits the fall. 

« 

As some fair female, unadorn'd and plain. 
Secure to please while youth confirms her reign, 
Slights every borrow'd charm that dress supplies, 

290 Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes ; 

But when those charms are past, for charms are 

frail, 
When time advances, and when lovers fail, 
She then shines forth, solicitous to bless, 
In all the glaring impotence of dress : 

295 Thus fares the land, by luxury betray 'd. 
In nature's simplest charms at first array'd ; 
But, verging to decline, its splendors rise. 
Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise ; 
While, scourged by famine from the smiling land, 

300 The mournful peasant leads his humble band ; 
And while he sinks, without one arm to save. 
The country blooms — a garden and a grave. 

287, The use of "female" for "woman" was common as late 
as Walter Scott. 



388 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Where then, ah ! where shall poverty reside, 
To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride ? 

305 If to some common's fenceless limits stray 'd, 
He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade, 
Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide^ 
And even the bare-worn common is denied. 
If to the city sped, what waits him there ? 

310 To see profusion that he must not share ; 
To see ten thousand baneful arts combin'd, 
To pamper luxury, and thin mankind ; 
To see those joys the sons of pleasure know 
Extorted from his fellow-creature's woe. 

815 Here, while the courtier glitters in brocade, 
There the pale artist plies the sickly trade ; 
Here, while the proud their long-drawn pomps dis- 
play, 
There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. 
The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight reign, 

320 Here, richly deck'd, admits the gorgeous train ; 
Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square, 
The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare. 
Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy ! 
Sure these denote one universal joy ! 

305. If to some common's fenceless limits [having] strayed. 

309. If to the city [he has] sped. 

316. Artist was applied to those engaged in the useful and 

mechanic arts in Goldsmith's time. 

319. When Coleridge wrote, 

" In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
A stately pleasure-dome decree," 

he, too, like Goldsmith, was using a word not in what we regard 
as its technical sense, but as expressing a certain splendor of 
building. 

322. Even now in the thick November fogs of London, link- 
boys, or boys with torches, point the way. Before the introduc- 
tion of street lamps, such aids were common whenever the gen- 
try would move about after night-fall. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 389 

325 Are these thy serious thoughts ? Ah ! turn thine 
eyes 
Where the poor houseless shivering female lies. 
She once, perhaps, in village plenty blest, 
Has wept at tales of innocence distrest ; 
Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, 

330 Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn ; 
Now lost to all — her friends, her virtue fled — 
Near her betrayer's door she lays her head, 
And, pinch'd with cold, and shrinking from the 

shower, 
With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour, 

335 When idly first, ambitious of the town, 

She left her wheel, and robes of country brown. 

Do thine, sweet Auburn, thine, the loveliest train, 
Do thy fair tribes participate her pain ? 
Even now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led, 
340 At proud men's doors they ask a little bread. 

Ah, no ! To distant climes, a dreary scene, 
Where half the convex world intrudes between, 
Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go, 

326. In his Citizen of the World Goklsmith has said : "These 
poor shivering females have once seen happier days, and been 
flattered into beauty. . . . Perhaps now lying at the doors of 
their betrayers, the}^ sue to wretches whose hearts are insensible." 

336. Her [spinning] wheel. 

343-358. Goldsmith, like Englishmen of a later day, was a 
little hazy in his notion of what the wilderness of America con- 
tained. He wrote not long after Oglethorpe was giving relief 
to many poor and distressed debtors, by welcoming them to his 
colony of Georgia. The Altama is better known as the Alta- 
maha, but a certain poetic liberty attaches to the description in. 
general. 



390 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe. 

345 Far different there from all that charm'd before, 
The various terrors of that horrid shore : 
Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray, 
And fiercely shed intolerable day; 
Those matted woods where birds forget to sing, 

350 But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling ; 

Those pois'nous fields with rank luxuriance crown'd, 
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around ; 
Where at each step the stranger fears to wake 
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake ; 

355 Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey 
And savage men more murderous still than they ; 
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies, 
Mingling the ravag'd landscape with the skies. 
Far different these from every former scene, 

360 The cooling brook, the grassy-vested green, 
The breezy covert of the warbling grove, 
That only shelter'd thefts of harmless love. 

Good Heaven! what sorrows gloom'd that part- 
ing day 
That call'd them from their native walks away; 
365 When the poor exiles, every pleasure past. 

Hung round the bowers, and fondly look'd their 

last. 
And took a long farewell, and wish'd in vain 
For seats like these beyond the western main ; 
And, shuddering still to face the distant deep, 
370 Return'd and wept, and still return'd to weep I 
The good old sire the first prepar'd to go 

368. It was a common phrase in the earlier colonial days to 
say of colonists that they " sate" in a particular region. 



I 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 391 

To new-found worlds, and wept for others' woe 5 
But for himself, in conscious virtue brave, 
He only wish'd for worlds beyond the grave. 

375 His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears, 
The fond com]3anion of his helpless years. 
Silent went next, neglectful of her charms, 
And left a lover's for a father's arms. 
With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes, 

880 And bless'd the cot where every pleasure rose ; 
And kiss'd her thoughtless babes with many a 

tear 
And clasp'd them close, in sorrow doubly dear j 
Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief 
In all the silent manliness of grief. 

385 O Luxury ! thou curst by Heaven's decree. 
How ill exchang'd are things like these for thee ! 
How do thy potions, with insidious joy. 
Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy ! 
Kingdoms by thee, to sickly greatness grown, 

390 Boast of a florid vigor not their own. 

At every draught more large and large they grow, 
A bloated mass of rank, unwieldy woe ; 
Till sapp'd their strength, and every part unsound, 
Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round. 

395 Even now the devastation is begun. 
And half the business of destruction done ; 
Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand, 
I see the rural Virtues leave the land, 

398. Here begins a sort of vision in which Goldsmith pictures 
such an emigrant band leaving England for America. 



392 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail, 

400 That idly waiting flaps with every gale, 
Downward they move, a melancholy band. 
Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand. 
Contented Toil, and hospitable Care, 
And kind connubial Tenderness, are there ; 

405 And Piety with wishes plac'd above, 
And steady Loyalty, and faithful Love. 
And thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid, 
Still first to fly where sensual joys invade ; 
Unfit, in these degenerate times of shame, 

410 To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame ; 
Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried, 
My shame in crowds, my solitary pride ; 
Thou source of all my bliss and all m}^ woe, 
That found' st me poor at first, and keep'st me 
so; 

415 Thou guide, by which the nobler arts excel, 
Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well I 
Farewell ! and oh ! where'er thy voice be tried, 
On Torno's cliffs, or Pambaraarca's side. 
Whether where equinoctial fervors glow, 

420 Or winter wraps the polar world in snow, 
Still let thy voice, prevailing over time, 
Redress the rigors of the inclement clime ; 
Aid slighted truth with thy persuasive strain ; 
Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain ; 

425 Teach him, that states of native strength possest, 

407. One is reminded of Bishop Berkeley's lines, 

" Religion stands a^tiptoe on the strand 
Waiting to pass to the American land." 

409. Unfit, unsuited. 

418. The river Tornea or Torneo falls into the Gulf of Both- 
nia. Pambamarca is given by Peter Cunningham as a moun- 
tain near Quito. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 393 

Though very poor, may still be very blest ; 
That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, 
As ocean sweeps the labor'd mole away ; 
While self-dependent power can time defy, 
430 As rocks resist the billows and the sky. 

427-430. " Dr. Johnson favored me at the same time by mark- 
ing the lines which he furnished to Goldsmith's Deserted Village^ 
which are only the last four."— Boswell. 



SIR ROGER DE COVERLET PAPERS. 

INTRODUCTION. 

The Spectator was a folio sheet which appeared in 
London on the first day of March, 1710-11,^ was issued 
daily until December 6, 1712, when it was discontinued 
for a year and a half, resumed June 18, 1714, and then 
issued three times a week until December 20 of the same 
year, when it ceased altogether. A daily paper, it resem- 
bled the modern daily paper only in having advertisements 
on the same sheet, but these were few and unobtrusive. 
It was in effect far more comparable with the modern 
magazine, for it left news and politics and trade to the gen- 
eral newspaper, which was then beginning to assert itself, 
and occupied itself with criticism on books, comments on 
fashions and manners, and, what interests us most, attempts 
at character drawing and portraits of typical personages. 

The Spectator is chief among the papers of its class 
which occupied the central position in literature in the 
eighteenth century, and it holds its high place because it 
was almost wholly the work of the two best writers of 
English at that time, Joseph Addison and Sir Richard 
Steele. Both of these men were artists in letters, but they 
had also that wholesome view of life which forbade them 
to treat men and manners merely as playthings for the 

1 In the former half of the eighteenth century it was still common 
to treat the 25th of March as New Year's Day. In order, therefore, 
to indicate the precise year of the days between January 1 and March 
25, it was customary to write the double year date as 1710-11, or 
171i, meaning- 1710, if the reader observed March 25 as New Year's 
Day; 1711 if he observed January 1. 




/at. ////yy^r^ 



INTRODUCTION. 395 

imagination. The essay was the form of literature which 
they found most available, for it was the nearest artistic 
reproduction of social intercourse, and the London of the 
early part of the eighteenth century was the London of 
coffee-houses, of court manners extending into the multi- 
tude of families which allied themselves with the two great 
parties in English politics, and the London of a commercial 
class rising into dignity and power. 

In the essay as Addison and Steele perfected it lay as 
yet undeveloped the modern novel. The romance was a 
form of literature recognized and accepted, and when the 
writers of these essays feigned narratives of distressed or 
inquiring damsels, they often gave them names out of the 
romances, as Annabella, Eucratia, Amaryllis, Leonora, and 
the like. But they fell, also, into the way of calling the 
fictitious figures Patience Giddy, Thomas Trusty, Sam 
Hopewell, and similar homely names, and at every stroke 
came nearer, also, to the familiar forms of actual life. It 
is apparent that the popularity of The 8'pectatoT from 
the first was due largely to the reality with which its au- 
thors invested the characters whom they impersonated. As 
soon as the Spectator himself had drawn his own portrait, 
he enlisted the interest and attention of a compact society 
of readers in London who loved gossip and social inter- 
course and were delighted to see their taste thus reflected 
in graceful literature. And when the next day this new 
paper proceeded to sketch a group of individual men, mak- 
ing them, after the fashion of the day, a club, the possi- 
bilities which lay in this reproduction, as in a mirror, of 
contemporaneous society, were so great that men and 
women everywhere received with enthusiasm this new crea- 
tion in letters, and the projectors of the paper were inspir- 
ited by their instantaneous success. 

It cannot be said that either Addison or Steele perceived 
the full force of what they had done. Their main interest 
was still in criticism of life, and the figures they so deftly 



396 SIR ROGER DE COVERLET. 

manipulated were rather agreeable reliefs, and even occa- 
sional mouthpieces of sentiment, than living persons whose 
fortunes were of the utmost importance. Still, there these 
creations were, and from time to time the artists who fash- 
ioned them revived them for their delight and added one 
touch of nature after another. The central figure was that 
of Sir Roger de Coverley, and the instinct of the artist led 
Addison with Steele's fine assistance to extend the fullest 
treatment upon the knight in his country honie, rather than 
in the town. 

The papers that follow are a few out of the thirty or 
forty in which Sir Roger's name appears. 



SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. 



THE SPECTATOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF. 

Nonfumum exfulgore^ sed exfumo dare lucem 
Cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat.^ 

Horace, Ars Poetica, 143, 144. 

I HAVE observed that a reader seldom peruses a 
book with pleasure 'till he knows whether the writer 
of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric 
disposition, married or a bachelor, with other partic- 
ulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to 
the right understanding of an author.^ To gratify 
this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design 
this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my 
following writings, and shall give some account in 

1. His thought it is, not smoke from flame, 
Bat out of smoke a steadfast light to bring, 
That in the light bright wonders he may frame. 

2. In his Notes on Walter Savage Landor, De Quiucey (iv. 
407), commenting on this passage, says : " No reader cares about 
an author's person before reading his book ; it is after reading 
it, and supposing the book to reveal something of the writer's 
inoral nature, as modifying his intellect ; it is for his fun, his 
fancy, his sadness, possibly his craziness, that any reader cares 
about seeing the author in person. Afflicted with the very saty- 
riasis of curiosity, no man ever wished to see the author of a 
Ready Reckoner, or of the Agistment Tithe, or on the Present 
Deplorable Dry Rot in Potatoes.''^ 



398 SIR ROGER DE COVERLET. 

them of the several ^ persons that are engaged in this 
work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting, 
and correcting, will fall to my share, I must do myself 
the justice to open the work with my own history. ^ 

I was born to a small hereditary estate, which, 
according to the tradition of the village where it lies, 
was bounded by the same hedges and ditches in Wil- 
liam the Conqueror's time that it is at present, and 
has been delivered down from father to son whole and 
entire,^ without the loss or acquisition of a single 
field or meadow, during the space of six hundred 
years. There runs a story in the family, that [before 
I was born] my mother dreamt that she was [to bring 
forth] a judge; whether this might proceed from a 
lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or 
my father's being a justice of the peace, I cannot 
determine; for I am not so vain as to think it pre- 
saged any dignity that I should arrive at in my fu- 
ture life, though that was the interpretation which 
the neighborhood put upon it. The gravity of my 
behavior at my very first appearance in the world 
seemed to favor my mother's dream; for, as she has 
often told me, I threw away my rattle before I was 
two months old, and would not make use of my coral 
till they had taken away the bells from it. 

1. Note that several is used in its specific meaning not of 
many, but of separate persons. 

2. Addison is of course constructing an imaginary character 
and giving him a consistent history, but as Macaulay remarks in 
his essay on The Life and Writings of Addison, " It is not easy to 
doubt that the portrait was meant to be in some features a like- 
ness of the painter." Especially may this be said of the humor- 
ously exaggerated characteristic of shyness. 

3. Whole, with all its divisions ; entire, with each division per- 
fect. 



THE SPECTATOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF. 399 

As for the rest of my infancy, tliere being nothing 
in it remarkable, I shall pass it over in silence. I 
find, that, during my nonage, I had the reputation 
of a very sullen youth, but was always a favorite of 
my schoolmaster, who used to say, that my parts 
were solid^ and woidd ivear well, I had not been 
long at the University, before I distinguished myself 
by a most profound silence ; for, during the space of 
eight years, excepting in the public exercises of the 
college, I scarce uttered the quantity of an hundred 
words; and indeed do not remember that I ever 
spoke three sentences together in my whole life. 
Whilst I was in this learned body, I applied myself 
with so much diligence to my studies, that there are 
very few celebrated books, either in the learned or 
modern tongues, which I am not acquainted with. 

Upon the death of my father, I was resolved to 
travel into foreign countries, and therefore left the 
University with the character of an odd unaccount- 
able fellow, that had a great deal of learning, if I 
would but show it. An insatiable thirst after know- 
ledge carried me into all the countries of Europe in 
which there was anything new or strange to be seen ; 
nay, to such a degree was my curiosity raised, that 
having read the controversies ^ of some great men 
concerning the antiquities of Egypt, I made a voyage 
to Grand Cairo, on purpose to take the measure of a 
pyramid: and, as soon as I had set myself right in 
that particular, returned to my native country with 
great satisfaction. 

1. In Addison's time, John Greaves, Professor of Astronomy 
at Oxford, had led in the discussion regarding the measurement 
of the pyramids, as in our day Piazzi Smyth, whose work, Our 
Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, still excites interest and debate. 



400 SIR ROGER BE COVERLEY. 

I have passed my latter years in this city, where I 
am frequently seen in most public places, though 
there are not above haK a dozen of my select friends 
that know me : of whom my next paper shall give a 
more particular account. There is no place of gen- 
eral resort wherein I do not often make my appear- 
ance ; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a 
round of politicians at Will's,^ and listening with 
great attention to the narratives that are made in 
those little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke 
a pipe at Child' s,^ and while I seem attentive to no- 
thing but the Postman^^ overhear the conversation of 
every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights 
at St. James's coffee-house,* and sometimes join the 
little committee of politics in the inner room,^ as one 
who comes there to hear and improve. My face is 
likewise very well known at the Grecian,^ the Cocoa 
Tree,''^ and in the theatres both of Drury Lane and 

1. "The father of the modern club." Will's Coffee House 
stood on the northwest corner of Russell and Bow Streets, Co- 
vent Garden. It took its name from the proprietor, William 
Urwin, and derived its greatest reputation from the poet Dry- 
den's resort to it. 

2. In St. Paul's churchyard. From its neighborhood to the 
cathedral, Doctor's Commons, the College of Physicians, and the 
Royal Society, it was frequented by clergy, lawyers, physicians, 
and men of science. 

3. The Postman, a journal edited by a French Protestant, M. 
Fonvive, was marked by the prominence it gave to foreign cor- 
respondence. 

4. The headquarters of Whig politicians. 

5. For a more particular account of what went on in the inner 
room, see The Spectator, No. 403. 

6. So called from being kept by a Greek named Constantino. 
Its nearness to the Temple led to its being the rendezvous of 
men of learning. 

7. The Tory headquarters. 



THE SPECTATOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF. 401 

the Hay Market. I liave been taken for a merchant 
upon the Exchange for above these ten years, and 
sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stock- 
jobbers at Jonathan's.^ In short, wherever I see a 
cluster of people, I always mix with them, though I 
never open my lips but in my own club. 

Thus I live in the world rather as a spectator of 
mankind than as one of the species; by which means 
I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, 
merchant, and artisan, without ever meddling with 
any practical part in life. I am very well versed in 
the theory of a husband or a father, and can dis- 
cern the errors in the economy, ^ business, and diver- 
sion of others, better than those who are engaged in 
them: as standers-by discover blots,^ which are apt 
to escape those who are in the game. I never espoused 
any party with violence, and am resolved to observe 
an exact neutrality between the Whigs and Tories, 
unless I shall be forced to declare myself by the hostil- 
ities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the 
parts of my life as a looker-on, which is the charac- 
ter I intend to preserve in this paper. 

I have given the reader just so much of my history 
and character, as to let him see I am not altogether 
unqualified for the business I have undertaken. As 
for other particulars in my life and adventures, I 
shall insert them in following papers, as I shall see 

1. Jonathan's coffee-house was the resort of the more ques- 
tionable sort of stock-jobbers. 

2. In The Spectator as originally printed, the spelling of this 
word ceconomy emphasized its meaning as derived from the 
Greek, the " management of the house." 

3. In the game of backgammon, " to make a blot " was to 
leave a piece exposed. 



402 SIR ROGER BE COVERLEY. 

occasion. In the mean time, when I consider how 
much I have seen, read, and heard, I begin to blame 
my own taciturnity; and since I have neither time 
nor inclination to communicate the fulness of my 
heart in speech, I am resolved to do it in writing, 
and to print myself out, if possible, before I die. I 
have been often told by my friends, that it is j)ity 
so many useful discoveries which I have made should 
be in the possession of a silent man. For this reason, 
therefore, I shall publish a sheet full of thoughts 
every morning, for the benefit of my contemporaries ; 
and if I can any way contribute to the diversion or 
improvement of the country in which I live, I shall 
leave it when I am summoned out of it, with the 
secret satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived 
in vain. 

There are three very material points which I have 
not spoken to^ in this paper, and which, for several 
important reasons, I must keep to myself, at least for 
some time : I mean, an account of my name, my age, 
and my lodgings. I must confess I would gratify 
my reader in anything that is reasonable ; but as for 
these three particulars, though I am sensible they 
might tend very much to the embellishment of my 
paper, I cannot yet come to a resolution of communi- 
cating them to the public. They would indeed draw 
me out of that obscurity which I have enjoyed for 
many years, and expose me in public places to several 
salutes and civilities, which have been always very 
disagreeable to me ; for the greatest pain I can suffer 
is the being talked to, and being stared at. It is for 

1. This phrase lingers in forensic terms, and "he speaks to 
the point," though used now to express pertinence of speech, 
once had the meaning of the text. 



THE CLUB. 403 

this reason likewise that I keep my complexion and 
dress as very great secrets; though it is not impossi- 
ble but I may make discoveries of both in the prog- 
ress of the work I have undertaken. 

After having been thus particular upon myself, I 
shall in to-morrow's paper give an account of those 
gentlemen who are concerned with me in this work; 
for, as I have before intimated, a plan of it is laid 
and concerted (as all other matters of importance are) 
in a club. However, as my friends have engaged me 
to stand in the front, those who have a mind to corre- 
spond with me may direct their letters to the Spec- 
tator, at Mr. Buckley's in Little Britain. ^ For I 
must further acquaint the reader, that though our 
club meets only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have 
appointed a committee to sit every night, for the in- 
spection of all such papers as may contribute to the 
advancement of the public weal. 



THE CLUB. 

Ast alii sex J 
Et plures, uno conclamant ore.^ 

Juvenal, Satire vii. 167. 

The first of our society is a gentleman of Worces- 
tershire, of ancient descent, a baronet, his name Sir 

1. In the Daily C our ant of March 1, 1711, the first daily news- 
paper, published by Buckley, appeared this advertisement : " This 
day is published a Paper entitled The Spectator at the Dol- 
phin, in Little Britain, and sold by A. Baldwin in Warwick 
Lane." 

2. Six others at least. 

And more, call out together with a single voice. 



404 SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. 

Roger de Coveiiey.^ His great-grandfatlier was in- 
ventor of that famous country-dance which is called 
after him.^ All who know that shire are very well 
acquainted with the parts and merits of Sir Roger. 
He is a gentleman that is very singular in his behav- 
ior, but his singularities proceed from his good sense, 
and are contradictions to the manners of the world 
only as he thinks the world is in the wrong. How- 
ever, this humor creates him no enemies, for he does 
nothing with sourness or obstinacy; and his being 
unconfined to modes and forms makes him but the 
readier and more capable to please and oblige all who 
know him. When he is in town, he lives in Soho 

1. It is an idle curiosity which seeks to identify the imaginary 
characters of these papers with actual persons. Even if it could 
be known to a certainty that this or that English knight or coun- 
try gentleman sat for his portrait, the characters which bear the 
names given by Steele and Addison are more real to us than the 
obscure men who suggested them. But there is strong reason 
for believing that the authors of these characters took particular 
pains to avoid confounding them with known men. Steele had 
once got himself into trouble by too close copies of living men, 
and Addison in the last number of The Spectator for this year, 
when the popularity of the several figures had set the gossips 
discussing their origin, takes pains to say : " I have shown in 
a former paper, with how much care I have avoided all such 
thoughts as are loose, obscene, or immoral ; and I believe my 
reader would still think the better of me, if he knew the pains 
I am at in qualifying what I write after such a manner, that 
nothing may be interpreted as aimed at private persons." In a 
word, these writers did what every self-respecting novelist to- 
day does ; they studied human nature, but respected the indi- 
vidual person. 

2. It was a clever turn to name the principal character after 
a popular dance of the day, and then gravely derive the dance 
from an ancestor of the hero. Steele says he was indebted to 
Swift for this. 



THE CLUB. 405 

Square.^ It is said he keeps himself a bachelor by 
reason he was crossed in love by a perverse beautiful 
widow of the next county to him. Before this disap- 
pointment, Sir Roger was what you call a fine gentle- 
man, had often supped with my Lord Rochester and 
Sir George Etherege,^ fought a duel upon his first 
coming to town, and kicked Bully Dawson ^ in a pub- 
lic coft'ee-house for calling him "youngster." But 
being ill used by the above mentioned widow, he was 
very serious for a year and a half ; and though, his 
temper being naturally jovial, he at last got over it, 
he grew careless of himself, and never dressed after- 
wards. He continues to wear a coat and doublet of 
the same cut that were in fashion at the time of his 
repulse, which, in his merry humors, he tells us, has 
been in and out * twelve times since he first wore it. 
He is now in his fifty-sixth year, cheerful, gay, and 
hearty; keeps a good house in both town and coun- 
try; a great lover of mankind; but there is such a 

1. The square had been biiilt upon about forty years previous, 
but the district bearing the name had been so called as early as 
1632. The origin of the name is referred conjecturally to the 
cry used by hunters when calling off the dogs from the hare ; a 
conjecture which is partly supported by the name Dogfields 
applied to a neighboring spot. In the early part of the seven- 
teenth century it was hunting-ground. It was still a fashionable 
quarter in 1711, though Sir Roger's residence is referred to an 
earlier period when its glory was less dimmed. 

2. The Earl of Rochester and Sir George Etherege were wits 
and courtiers in the dissolute times of Charles II. 

3. Bully Dawson was a swaggerer of the time who copied the 
morals but not the wit of the court, and belonged to a lower 
social grade. As Rochester died in 1680 and Etherege in 1689, 
it is allowable to guess that Sir Roger when resenting Bully 
Dawson's contemptuous epithet was under twenty-five. 

4. That is, of the fiishion. 



406 SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. 

mirthful cast in his behavior, that he is rather beloved 
than esteemed.^ His tenants grow rich, his servants 
look satisfied, all the young women profess love to 
him, and the young men are glad of his company: 
when he comes into a house he calls the servants by 
their names, and talks all the way up stairs to a visit. 
I must not omit that Sir Eoger is a justice of the 
quorum; that he fills the chair at a quarter-session 
with great abilities; and, three months ago, gained 
universal applause by explaining a passage in the 
Game Act.^ 

The gentleman next in esteem and authority among 
us is another bachelor, who is a member of the Inner 
Temple;^ a man of great probity, wit, and under- 
standing; but he has chosen his place of residence 
rather to obey the direction of an old humorsome 
father, than in pursuit of his own inclinations. He 
was placed there to study the laws of the land, and 
is the most learned of any of the house in those of 
the stage. Aristotle and Longinus are much better 
understood by him than Littleton or Coke.^ The 

1. The notion of esteemed as here used supposes a cold ap- 
proval. 

2. The Game Act ably expounded by Sir Roger was probably 
that of Charles II. which defined what persons were privileged 
to keep guns and bows and have hunting-grounds ; among these 
were landowners worth at least a hundred pounds a year, and 
the sons and heirs-apparent of esquires or of persons of higher 
degree. 

3. There were four Inns of Court or societies of lawyers in 
London at this time, the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, 
Lincoln's Inn, and Gray's Inn. 

4. Aristotle, who lived three centuries before Christ, and Lon- 
ginus, who lived three centuries after Christ, were the classic 
ancient authorities on the criticism of art ; Littleton and Coke, 
the former in the fifteenth, and the latter who was a commen- 



THE CLUB. 407 

father sends up every post questions relating to mar- 
riage-articles, leases, and tenures, in tlie neighbor- 
hood ; all which questions he agrees with an attorney 
to answer and take care of in the lump. He is study- 
ing the passions themselves, when he should be in- 
quiring into the debates among men which arise from 
them. He knows the argument of each of the ora- 
tions of Demosthenes and Tully,^ but not one case in 
the reports of our own courts. No one ever took him 
for a fool, but none, except his intimate friends, 
know he has a great deal of wit.^ This turn makes 
him at once both disinterested and agreeable : as few 
of his thoughts are drawn from business, they are 
most of them fit for conversation. His taste of books 
is a little too just for the age he lives in; he has read 
all, but approves of very few. His familiarity with 
the customs, manners, actions, and writings of the 
ancients makes him a very delicate observer of what 
occurs to him in the present world. He is an excel- 
lent critic, and the time of the play is his hour of 
business; exactly at five^ he passes through New 
Inn,^ crosses through Eussell Court, and takes a turn 

tator on hiin, in the sixteenth, were the classic English authorities 
on law. 

1. Tully was for a long time the familiar mode in which 
Marcus Tullius Cicero was spoken of in England. 

2. It should be remembered that our limitation of the use of 
this word did not prevail in the time of The Spectator, when its 
more common significance as here was that of intellectual force. 

3. In 1663 the theatrical performances began at three in the 
afternoon. In 1667 the hour was four, and the time was gradu- 
ally made later. In 1711 the hour was six, dinner having been 
usually at three or four. The beau of the season after dinner 
was wont to spend an hour at a coffee-house before the play. 

4. There were pleasant walks and gardens attached to New 
Inn, which was a precinct of Middle Temple. 



408 SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. 

at Will's till the play begins; he has his shoes rubbed 
and his periwig powdered at the barber's as you go 
into the Rose.^ It is for the good of the audience 
when he is at a play, for the actors have an ambition 
to please him. 

The person of next consideration is Sir Andrew 
rreeport,^ a merchant of great eminence in the city 
of London, a person of indefatigable industry, strong 
reason, and great experience. His notions of trade 
are noble and generous, and (as every rich man has 
usually some sly way of jesting, which would make 
no great figure were he not a rich man) he calls the 
sea the British Common. He is acquainted with 
commerce in all its parts, and will tell you that it is 
a stupid and barbarous way to extend dominion by 
arms ; for true power is to be got by arts and indus- 
try. He will often argue that if this part of our 
trade were well cultivated, we should gain from one 
nation; and if another, from another. I have heard 
him prove that diligence makes more lasting acquisi- 
tions than valor, and that sloth has ruined more na- 
tions than the sword. He abounds in several frugal 

1. The Rose Tavern in Co vent Garden adjoining Drury Lane 
Theatre was the haunt of dramatic authors. 

2. From the character and opinions of Sir Andrew it is not 
unlikely that in choosing his name Steele and Addison made allu- 
sion to the policy then urged to abolish the commercial restric- 
tions of the port of London. Dr. Johnson in his life of Addison 
says : " To Sir Roger, who as a country gentleman appears to be 
a Tory, or as it is generally expressed, an adherent to the landed 
interest, is opposed Sir Andrew Freeport, a new man and a 
wealthy merchant, zealous for the moneyed interest and a Whig. 
Of this contrariety of opinions more consequences were at first 
intended than could be produced when the resolution was taken 
to exclude party from the paper." 



THE CLUB. 409 

maxims, amongst which the greatest favorite is, "A 
penny saved is a penny got." A general trader of 
good sense is pleasanter company than a general 
scholar; and Sir Andrew having a natural unaffected 
eloquence, the perspicuity of his discourse gives the 
same pleasure that wit would in another man. He 
has made his fortunes himself, and says that England 
may be richer than other kingdoms by as plain meth- 
ods as he himself is richer than other men; though 
at the same time I can say this of him, that there is 
not a point in the compass but blows home a ship in 
which he is an owner. 

Next to Sir Andrew in the club -room sits Captain 
Sentry, a gentleman of great courage, good under- 
standing, but invincible modesty. He is one of those 
that deserve very well, but are very awkward at putting 
their talents within the observation of such as should 
take notice of them. He was some years a captain, 
and behaved himself with great gallantry in several 
engagements and at several sieges; but having a 
small estate of his own, and being next heir to Sir 
Roger, ^ he has quitted a way of life in which no man 
can rise suitably to his merit who is not something of 
a courtier as well as a soldier. I have heard him 
often lament that in a profession where merit is 
placed in so conspicuous a view, impudence should 
get the better of modesty. When he has talked to 
this purpose I never heard him make a sour expres- 
sion, but frankly confess that he left the world be- 
cause he was not fit for it. A strict honesty and an 
even regular behavior are in themselves obstacles to 
him that must press through crowds, who endeavor 

1. In the last of these papers, Captain Sentry is further noted 
as nephew to Sir Roger. 



410 SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. 

at tlie same end with himself, — the favor of a com- 
mander. He will, however, in this way of talk excuse 
generals for not disposing according to men's desert, 
or inquiring into it: "for," says he, "that great man 
who has a mind to help me, has as many to break 
through to come at me, as I have to come at him; " 
therefore he will conclude, that the man who would 
make a figure, especially in a military way, must get 
over all false modesty, and assist his patron against 
the importunity of other pretenders by a proper assur- 
ance in his own vindication. He says it is a civil 
cowardice to be backward in asserting what you 
- ought to expect, as it is a military fear to be slow in 
attacking when it is your duty. With this candor 
does the gentleman speak of himself and others. 
The same frankness runs through all his conversation. 
The military part of his life has furnished him with 
many adventures, in the relation of which he is very 
agreeable to the company ; for he is never overbear- 
ing:, thousfh accustomed to command men in the 
utmost degree below him; nor ever too obsequious 
from a habit of obeying men highly above him. 

But that our society may not appear a set of hu- 
morists ^ unacquainted with the gallantries and pleas- 
ures of the age, we have among us the gallant Will 
Honeycomb, a gentleman who according to his years 
should be in the decline of his life, but having ever 
been very careful of his person, and always had a 
very easy fortune, time has made but very little 
impression either by wrinkles on his forehead, or 

1. That is, persons who conduct themselves after their own 
whims rather than by the conventional laws of society. Ben 
Jonson emphasizes this significance of the word in his playa 
Every Man in his Humor and Every Man out of his Humor. 



THE CLUB. 411 

traces in his brain. His person is well turned, and 
of good height. He is very ready at that sort of 
discourse with which men usually entertain women. 
He has all his life dressed very well, and remembers 
habits 1 as others do men. He can smile when one 
speaks to him, and laughs easily. He knows the his- 
tory of every mode, and can inform you from which 
of the French kino-'s wenches our wives and daus-h- 
ters had this manner of curling their hair, that way 
of placing their hoods ; whose frailty was covered by 
such a sort of petticoat, and whose vanity to show 
her foot made that part of the dress so short in such 
a year; in a word, all his conversation and knowledge 
has been in the female world. As other men of his 
age will take notice to you what such a minister said 
upon such and such an occasion, he will tell you 
when the Duke of Monmouth ^ danced at court such 
a woman was then smitten, another was taken with 
him at the head of his troop in the Park. In all 
these important relations, he has ever about the same 
time received a kind glance or a blow of a fan from 
some celebrated beauty, mother of the present Lord 
Such-a-one. If you speak of a young commoner that 
said a lively thing in the House, he starts up: "He 
has good blood in his veins ; Tom Mirabel begot him ; ^ 
the rogue cheated me in that affair : that young f el- 

1. That is, dresses and costumes. We retain this use in the 
compound riding-habit. 

2. The handsome, dashing, and favorite son of Charles II. 
" The queen ... it seems, was at Windsor at the late St. 
George's feast there, and the Duke of Monmouth dancing with 
her with his hat in his hand, the king came in and kissed him, 
and made him put on his hat, which everybody took notice of." 
Pepys's Diary, April 27, 1663. 

3. Mirabel was a favorite name in the comedies of the day. 



412 SIR ROGER DE COVERLET. 

low's mother used me more like a dog than any 
woman I ever made advances to." This way of talk- 
ing of his very much enlivens the conversation among 
us of a more sedate turn ; and I find there is not one 
of the company, but myself, who rarely speak at all, 
but speaks of him as of that sort of man who is usu- 
ally called a well-bred fine gentleman. To conclude 
his character, where women are not concerned, he is 
an honest worthy man. 

I cannot tell whether I am to account him whom I 
am next to speak of as one of our company, for he 
visits us but seldom; but when he does, it adds to 
every man else a new enjoyment of himself. He is 
a clergyman, a very philosophic man, of general 
learning, great sanctity of life, and the most exact 
good breeding. He has the misfortune to be of a very 
weak constitution, and consequently cannot accept of 
such cares and business as preferments in his func- 
tion would oblige him to; he is therefore among 
divines what a chamber-counsellor is among la^vyers. 
The probity of his mind, and the integrity of his life, 
create him followers, as being eloquent or loud 
advances others. He seldom introduces the subject 
he speaks upon; but we are so far gone in years, 
that he observes, when he is among us, an earnest- 
ness to have him fall on some divine tojDic, which he 
always treats with much authority, as one who has no 
interests in this world, as one Avho is hastening to the 
object of all his wishes, and conceives hope from his 
decays and infirmities. These are my ordinary com- 
panions.' 



SIK ROGER AT HIS COUNTRY HOUSE. 

Hinc tihi copia 
Manahit ad plenum, benigno 
Muris honorum opulenta cornu?- 

HoKACE, Odes, I. xvii. 14-17. 

Having often received an invitation from my 
friend Sir Roger de Coverley ^ to pass away a month 
with him in the country, I last week accompanied him 
thither, and am settled with him for some time at his 
country house, where I intend to form several of my 
ensuing speculations. Sir Roger, who is very well 
acquainted with my humor, lets me rise and go to 
bed when I please, dine at his own table or in my 

1. [The Gods are my guardians, the Gods like my piety, 
And are pleased with my Muse ;] from their bounty shall 

flow 
For your use all the fruits of the earth to satiety, 
All the pleasures that Nature alone can bestow. 

John 0. Sargenfs translation. 

2. In The Spectator it is four months since the introduction 
of the figure of Sir Roger, and the papers that intervene 
scarcely do anything toward filling out the character, so skill- 
fully outlined by Steele. Indeed, of all the persons named in 
the second paper. Will Honeycomb is by far the most frequently 
named ; but it must not be inferred that Sir Roger had been out 
of mind. In the number for April 23d, Addison publishes a 
paper of Minutes for articles which the Spectator is supposed to 
have dropped accidentally in a coffee-house. The first memo- 
randum is "Sir Roger de Coverley's Country Seat." He now 
takes up the character in good earnest, and with occasional help 
from Steele and Budgell makes it his own. 



414 SIR ROGER DE COVERLET. 

chamber as I think fit, sit still and say nothing with- 
out bidding me be merry. When the gentlemen of 
the country come to see him, he only shows me at a 
distance: as I have been walking in his fields I have 
observed them stealing a sight of me over an hedge, ^ 
and have heard the Knight desiring them not to let 
me see them, for that I hated to be stared at. 

I am the more at ease in Sir Roger's family, be- 
cause it consists of sober and staid persons; for, as 
the Knight is the best master in the world, he seldom 
changes his servants; and as he is beloved by all 
about him, his servants never care for leaving him; 
by this means his domestics are all in years, and 
grown old with their master. You would take his 
valet de chambre for his brother, his butler is gray- 
headed, his groom is one of the gravest men that I 
have ever seen, and his coachman has the looks of a 
privy counsellor. You see the goodness of the master 
even in the old house dog, and in a gray pad that is 
kept in the stable with great care and tenderness, out 
of regard to his past services, though he has been 
useless for several years. 

I could not but observe with a great deal of pleas- 
ure, the joy that appeared in the countenances of 
these ancient domestics upon my friend's arrival at 
his country-seat. Some of them could not refrain 
from tears at the sight of their old master; every one 
of them pressed forward to do something for him, and 
seemed discouraged if they were not employed. At 
the same time the good old Knight, with the mixture 
of the father and the master of the family, tempered 
the inquiries after his own affairs with several kind 

1. In Addison's time the distinction had not become fixed 
which uses an only before a vowel or silent h. 



SIR ROGER AT HIS COUNTRY HOUSE. 415 

questions relating to themselves. This humanity 
and good-nature engages everybody to him, so that 
when he is pleasant ^ upon any of them, all his family 
are in good humor, and none so much as the person 
whom he diverts himself with : on the contrary, if he 
coughs, or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy 
for a stander-by to observe a secret concern in the 
looks of all his servants. 

My worthy friend has put me under the particular 
care of his butler, who is a very prudent man, and, 
as well as the rest of his fellow-servants, wonderfully 
desirous of pleasing me, because they have often 
heard their master talk of me as of his particular 
friend. 

My chief companion, when Sir Roger is diverting 
himself in the woods or the fields, is a very venerable 
man who is ever with Sir Roger, and has lived at his 
house in the nature of a chaplain above thirty years. 
This gentleman is a person of good sense and some 
learning, of a very regular life and obliging conver- 
sation: he heartily loves Sir Roger, and knows 
that he is very much in the old Knight's esteem, so 
that he lives in the family rather as a relation than a 
dependent.^ 

I have observed in several of my papers that my 
friend Sir Roger, amidst all his good qualities, is 
something of an humorist; and that his virtues as 
well as imperfections are, as it were, tinged by a 
certain extravagance, which makes them particularly 

1. This sense of tlie word survives in the form pleasantry. 

2. The literature of Addison's time is full of intimations of 
the inferior position of the country clergy. Fifty years later 
Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield gave evidence of the same social 
condition. 



416 SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. 

his^ and distinguishes tliem from tliose o£ other men. 
This cast of mind, as it is generally very innocent in 
itself, so it renders his conversation highly agreeable, 
and more delightful than the same degree of sense 
and virtue woidd appear in their common and ordi- 
nary colors. As I was walking with him last night, 
he asked me how I liked the good man whom I have 
just now mentioned, and without staying for my 
answer told me that he was afraid of being insulted 
with Latin and Greek at his own table, for which 
reason he desired a particular friend of his at the 
University to find him out a clergyman rather of 
plain sense than much learning, of a good aspect, a 
clear voice, a sociable temper, and, if possible, a 
man that understood a little of backgammon. My 
friend, says Sir Roger, found me out this gentleman^ 
who, besides the endowments required of him, is, 
they tell me, a good scholar, though he does not show 
it: I have given him the parsonage of the parish; 
and, because I know his value, have settled upon 
him a good annuity for life. If he outlives me, he 
shall find that he was higher in my esteem than per- 
haps he thinks he is. He has now been with me 
thirty years, and, though he does not know I have 
taken notice of it, has never in all that time asked 
anything of me for himself, though he is every day 
soliciting me for something in behalf of one or other 
of my tenants his parishioners. There has not been 
a lawsuit in the parish since he has lived among 
them : if any dispute arises they apply themselves to 
him for the decision; if they do not acquiesce in 
his judgment, which I think never happened above 
once or twice at most, they appeal to me. At his 
first settling with me I made him a present of all the 



SIR ROGER AT HIS COUNTRY HOUSE. 417 

good sermons which have been printed in English, 
and only begged of him that every Sunday he would 
pronounce one of them in the pulpit. Accordingly 
he has digested them into such a series, that they 
follow one another naturally, and make a continued 
system of practical divinity. 

As Sir Roger was going on in his story, the gen- 
tleman we were talking of came up to us; and upon 
the Knight's asking him who preached to-morrow 
(for it was Saturday night) told us the Bishop of St. 
Asaph ^ in the morning, and Dr. South in the after- 
noon. He then showed us his list of preachers for 
the whole year, where I saw with a great deal of 
pleasure Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop Saunderson, 
Dr. Barrow, Dr. Calamy, with several living authors 
who have published discourses of practical divinity. 
I no sooner saw this venerable man in the pulpit, 
but I very much approved of my friend's insisting 
upon the qualifications of a good aspect and a clear 
voice; for I was so charmed with the gracefulness of 
his figure and delivery, as well as with the discourses 
he pronounced, that I think I never passed any time 
more to my satisfaction. A sermon repeated after 
this manner is like the composition of a poet in the 
mouth of a graceful actor. 

I could heartily wish that more of our country 
clergy would follow this example; and, instead of 
wasting their spirits in laborious compositions of 
their own, would endeavor after a handsome elocu- 
tion, and all those other talents that are proper to 

1. William Beveridge, who had recently died, and whose ser- 
mons had a high popularity. It is possible, however, tliat Addi- 
son had in mind Dr, William Fleetwood who gueceeded Bever- 
idge. 



418 SIR ROGER BE COVE RLE Y. 

enforce what has been penned by greater masters. 
This would not only be more easy to themselves, but 
more edifying to the people. 



THE COVERLET HOUSEHOLD. 

^sopo ingentem statuam posuere Attici, 
Servumque collocnrunt ceterna in bast, 
Patere honoris scirent ut cuncti viam?- 

Ph^drus, Ep. i. 2. 

The reception, manner of attendance, undisturbed 
freedom, and quiet, which I meet with here in the 
country, has confirmed me in the opinion I always 
had, that the general corruption of manners in ser- 
vants is owing to the conduct of masters. The as- 
pect of every one in the family carries so much satis- 
faction that it appears he knows the happy lot which 
has befallen him in being a member of it. There is 
one particular which I have seldom seen but at Sir 
Roger's; it is usual in all other places, that servants 
fly from the parts of the house through which their 
master is passing: on the contrary, here they indus- 
triously place themselves in his way; and it is on 
both sides, as it were, understood as a visit, when the 
servants appear without calling. This proceeds from 
the humane and equal temper of the man of the 
house, who also perfectly well knows how to enjoy a 
great estate with such economy as ever to be much 
beforehand. This makes his own mind untroubled, 
and consequently unapt to vent peevish expressions, 

1. To ^sop a more than life-size statue did the Athenians 
raise. 
Slave though he was, they placed him on a solid base, 
Tljat all might know how open lay the path of honor. 



THE COVERLET HOUSEHOLD. 419 

or give passionate or inconsistent orders to those 
about him. Thus respect and love go together, and 
a certain cheerfuhiess in performance of their duty is 
the particular distinction of the lower part of this 
family. When a servant is called before his master, 
he does not come with an expectation to hear himself 
rated for some trivial fault, threatened to be stripped, 
or used with any other unbecoming language, which 
mean masters often give to worthy servants ; but it is 
often to know what road he took that he came so 
readily back according to order; whether he passed 
by such a ground; if the old man who rents it is in 
good health; or whether he gave Sir Roger's love to 
him, or the like. 

A man who preserves a respect founded on his 
benevolence to his dependents lives rather like a 
prince than a master in his family; his orders are 
received as favors, rather than duties; and the dis- 
tinction of approaching him is part of the reward for 
executing what is commanded by him. 

There is another circumstance in which my friend 
excels in his management, which is the manner of 
rewardino^ his servants : he has ever been of opinion 
that giving his cast clothes to be worn by valets has 
a very ill effect upon little minds, and creates a silly 
sense of equality between the parties, in persons 
affected only with outward things. I have heard him 
often pleasant on this occasion, and describe a young 
gentleman abusing his man in that coat which a 
month or two before was the most pleasing distinction 
he was conscious of in himself. He would turn his 
discourse still more pleasantly upon the ladies' boun- 
ties of this kind ; and I have heard him say he knew 
a fine woman, who distributed rewards and punish- 



420 SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. 

ments in giving becoming or unbecoming dresses to 
her maids. 

But my good friend is above these little instances 
of good-will, in bestow^ing only trifles on his servants ; 
a good servant to him is sure of having it in his 
choice very soon of being no servant at all. As I 
before observed, he is so good an husband,^ and 
knows so thoroughly that the skill of the purse is the 
cardinal virtue of this life, — I say, he knows so well 
that frugality is the support of generosity, that he 
can often spare a large fine when a tenement falls,^ 
and give that settlement to a good servant who has a 
mind to go into the world, or make a stranger pay 
the fine to that servant, for his more comfortable 
maintenance, if he stays in his service. 

A man of honor and generosity considers it would 
be miserable to himself to have no will but that of 
another, though it were of the best person breathing, 
and for that reason goes on as fast as he is able to 
put his servants into independent livelihoods. The 
greatest part of Sir Roger's estate is tenanted by 
persons who have served himself or his ancestors. 
It was to me extremely pleasant to observe the visit- 
ants from several parts to welcome his arrival into 
the country ; and all the difference that I could take 
notice of between the late servants who came to see 
him, and those who stayed in the family, was that 
these latter were looked upon as finer gentlemen and 
better courtiers. 

1. We still say to husband one's resources, but the noun hus- 
band supposes a wife. 

2. A legal phrase. When a tenant of a knight made over his 
land or tenement to another he was required to pay the knight 
a fine of money. 



THE COVERLET HOUSEHOLD. 421 

This manumission and placing tliem in a way of 
liveliliood I look upon as only what is due to a good 
servant, which encouragement will make his successor 
be as diligent, as humble, and as ready as he was. 
There is something wonderful in the narrowness of 
those minds which can be pleased and be barren of 
bounty to those who please them. 

One might, on this occasion, recount the sense 
that great persons in all ages have had of the merit 
of their dependents, and the heroic services which 
men have done their masters in the extremity of their 
fortunes; and shown to their undone patrons that 
fortune was all the difference between them; but as I 
design this my speculation only as a gentle admoni- 
tion to thankless masters, I shall not go out of the 
occurrences of common life, but assert it as a general 
observation, that I never saw, but in Sir Roger's 
family, and one or two more, good servants treated 
as they ought to be. Sir Roger's kindness extends 
to their children's children, and this very morning he 
sent his coachman's grandson to prentice. I shall 
conclude this paper with an accomit of a picture in 
his gallery, where there are many which will deserve 
my future observation. 

At the very upper end of this handsome structure 
I saw the portraiture of two young men standing in 
a river, the one naked, the other in a livery. The 
person supported seemed half dead, but still so much 
alive as to show in his face exquisite joy and love 
towards the other. I thought the fainting figure 
resembled my friend Sir Roger; and looking at the 
butler, who stood by me, for an account of it, he in- 
formed me that the person in the livery was a servant 
of Sir Roger's, who stood on the shore while his mas- 



422 SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. 

ter was swimming, and observing liim taken with 
some sudden illness, and sink under water, jumped 
in and saved liim. He told me Sir Roger took off 
tlie dress ^ lie was in as soon as he came home, and 
by a great bounty at that time, followed by his favor 
ever since, had made him master of that pretty seat 
which we saw at a distance as we came to this house. 
I remembered indeed Sir Roger said there lived a 
very worthy gentleman, to whom he was highly 
obliged, without mentioning anything further. Upon 
my looking a little dissatisfied at some part of the 
picture, my attendant informed me that it was 
against Sir Roger's will, a.nd a.t the earnest request 
of the gentleman himself, that he was drawn in the 
habit in which he had saved his master. 



WILL WIMBLE. 

Gratis anhelans, multa agendo nihil agens.'^ 

Ph^dkus, lib. II. fab. v. 3. 

As I was yesterday morning walking with Sir 
Roger before his house, a country fellow brought 
him a huge fish, which, he told him, Mr. William 
Wimble had caught that very morning ; and that he 
presented it, with his service to him, and intended to 
come and dine with him. At the same time he de- 
livered a letter, which my friend read to me as soon 
as the messenger left him. 

" Sir Roger, — I desire you to accept of a jack, 
which is the best I have caught this season. I intend 

1. That is, the livery which was a badge of service. 

2. Out of breath for nothing, hard at work doing nothing. 



WILL WIMBLE. 423 

to come and stay with you a week, and see how the 
perch bite in the Black River. I observed with some 
concern, the last time I saw you upon the bowling- 
green, that your whip wanted a lash to it; I will 
bring half a dozen with me that I twisted last week, 
which I hope will serve you all the time you are in 
the country. I have not been out of the saddle for 
six days last past, having been at Eton with Sir 
John's eldest son. He takes to his learning hugely. 
" I am, sir, your humble servant, 

"Will Wimble." 

This extraordinary letter, and message that accom- 
panied it, made me very curious to know the charac- 
ter and quality of the gentleman who sent them, 
which I found to be as follows. Will Wimble is 
younger brother to a baronet, and descended of the 
ancient family of the W^imbles.^ He is now between 
forty and fifty; but being bred to no business and 
born to no estate, he generally lives with his elder 
brother as superintendent of his game. He hunts a 
pack of dogs better than any man in the country, and 
is very famous for finding out a hare. He is ex- 
tremely well versed in all the little handicrafts of an 

1. In The Tatler, No. 256, Steele had already drawn almost 
the same portrait in his character of Mr. Thomas Gules of Gule 
Hall. " He was the cadet of a very ancient family ; and accord- 
ing to the principles of all the younger brothers of the said 
family, he had never sullied himself with business ; but had 
chosen rather to starve like a man of honor, than do anything 
beneath his quality. He produced several witnesses that he 
had never employed himself beyond the twisting of a whip, or 
the making of a pair of nut-crackers, in which he only worked 
for his diversion, in order to make a present now and then to 
his friends." 



424 SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. 

idle man : lie makes a may -fly to a miracle, and fur- 
nishes the whole country with angle-rods. As he is 
a good-natured officious fellow, and very much es- 
teemed upon account of his family, he is a welcome 
guest at every house, and keeps up a good correspon- 
dence among all the gentlemen about him. He car- 
ries a tulip-root in his pocket from one to another, or 
exchanges a puppy between a couple of friends that 
live perhaps in the opposite sides of the county. 
Will is a particular favorite of all the young heirs, 
whom he frequently obliges with a net that he has 
weaved, or a setting-dog that he has made ^ himself. 
He now and then presents a pair of garters of his own 
knitting to their mothers or sisters ; and raises a great 
deal of mirth among them, by inquiring as often as 
he meets them how they wear. These gentleman-like 
manufactures and obliging little humors make Will 
the darling of the country. 

Sir Roger was proceeding in the character of him, 
when we saw him make up to us with two or three 
hazel-twigs in his hand, that he had cut in Sir Roger's 
woods, as he came through them, in his way to the 
house. I was very much pleased to observe on one 
side the hearty and sincere welcome with which Sir 
Roger received him, and, on the other, the secret joy 
which his guest discovered at sight of the good old 
Knight. After the first salutes were over. Will 
desired Sir Roger to lend him one of his servants to 
carry a set of shuttlecocks he had with him in a little 
box to a lady that lived about a mile off, to whom it 
seems he had promised such a present for above this 
half year. Sir Roger's back was no sooner turned 
but honest Will began to tell me of a large cock- 
1. That is, trained a setter. 



WILL WIMBLE. 425 

pheasant that he had sprung in one of the neighbor- 
ing woods, with two or three other adventures of the 
same nature. Odd and uncommon characters are the 
game that I look for and most delight in; for which 
reason I was as much pleased with the novelty of the 
person that talked to me, as he could be for his life 
with the springing of a pheasant, and therefore lis- 
tened to him with more than ordinary attention. 

In the midst of his discourse the bell rung to din- 
ner, where the gentleman I have been speaking of 
had the pleasure of seeing the huge jack he had caught 
served up for the first dish in a most sumptuous 
manner. Upon our sitting down to it he gave us a 
long account how he had hooked it, played with it, 
foiled it, and at length drew it out upon the bank, 
with several other particulars that lasted all the first 
course. A dish of wild fowl that came afterwards 
furnished conversation for the rest of the dinner, 
which concluded with a late invention of Will's for 
improving the quail-pipe. 

Upon withdrawing into my room after dinner, I 
was secretly touched with compassion towards the 
honest gentleman that had dined with us, and could 
not but consider, with a great deal of concern, how 
so good an heart and such busy hands were wholly 
employed in trifles ; that so much humanity should be 
so little beneficial to others, and so much industry so 
little advantageous to himself. The same temper of 
mind and application to affairs might have recom- 
mended him to the public esteem, and have raised 
his fortune in another station of life. What good to 
his country or himself might not a trader or mer- 
chant have done with such useful though ordinary 
qualifications? 



426 SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. 

Will Wimble's is the case of many a younger 
brother of a great family, who had rather see their 
children starve like gentlemen than thrive in a trade 
or profession that is beneath their quality. This 
humor fills several parts of Europe with pride and 
beggary. It is the happiness of a trading nation, 
like ours, that the younger sons, though uncapable of 
any liberal art or profession, may be placed in such 
a way of life as may perhaps enable them to vie with 
the best of their family. Accordingly, we find sev- 
eral citizens that were launched into the world with 
narrow fortunes, rising by an honest industry to 
greater estates than those of their elder brothers. It 
is not improbable but Will was formerly tried at 
divinity, law, or physic ; and that finding his genius 
did not lie that way, his parents gave him up at 
length to his own inventions. But certainly, how- 
ever improper he might have been for studies of a 
higher nature, he was perfectly well turned for the 
occupations of trade and commerce. As I think this 
is a point which cannot be too much inculcated, I 
shall desire my reader to compare what I have here 
written with what I have said in my twenty-first 
speculation.^ 

1. In the twenty-first paper, or speculation, of The Spectator^ 
Addison discusses the overstocking of the three great professions 
of divinity, law, and physic. 



DEATH OF SIR ROGER DE COVERLET. 427 



DEATH OF SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY.i 

Heu Pietas ! keu prisca Fides ! - 

Virgil, A^neid, vi. 878. 

We last niglit received a Piece of ill News at our 
Club, which very sensibly afflicted every one of us. 
I question not but my Readers themselves will be 
troubled at the hearing of it. To keep them no 
longer in Suspence, Sir Roger de Coverley is 
dead.^ He departed this Life at his House in the 
Country, after a few Weeks Sickness. Sir Andrew 
Freeport has a Letter from one of his Correspon- 
dents in those Parts, that informs him the old Man 
caught a Cold at the County-Sessions, as he was very 
warmly promoting an Address of his own penning, in 
which lie succeeded according to his Wishes. But 
this Particular comes from a Whig-Justice of Peace, 
who was always Sir Roger's Enemy and Antago- 
nist. I have Letters both from the Chaplain and 
Captain Sentry which mention nothing of it, but are 
filled with many Particulars to the Honour of the 
good old Man. I have likewise a Letter from the 
Butler, who took so much care of me last Summer 
when I was at the Knight's House. As my Friend 
the Butler mentions, in the Simplicity of his Heart, 
several Circumstances the others have passed over in 
Silence, I shall give my Reader a Copy of his Let- 
ter, without any Alteration or Diminution. 

1. As explained in the introduction, this number of TJie Spec- 
tator is reproduced with the spellmg, italics, and capitalization 
originally used. 

2. Ah piety ! ah ancient faith ! 

3. The anticipated closing of The Spectator doubtless deter- 
mined Addison to put the good knight to death. Writers of the 
time assert that Addison feared the character might otherwise 
be adopted by some other writer. 



428 SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. 

Honoured Sir, 

'Knowing that you was^ my old Master's good 
Friend, I could not forbear sending you tlie melan- 
choly News of his Death, which has afflicted the 
whole Country, as well as his poor Servants, who 
loved him, I may say, better than we did our Lives. 
I am afraid he caught his Death the last County 
Sessions, where he would go to see Justice done to a 
poor Widow Woman, and her Fatherless Children, 
that had been wronged by a neighbouring Gentle- 
man; for you know. Sir, my good Master was al- 
ways the poor Man's Friend. Upon his coming 
home, the first Complaint he made was, that he had 
lost his Koast-Beef Stomach, not being able to touch 
a Sirloin, which was served up according to Custom ; 
and you know he used to take great Delight in it. 
From that time forward he grew worse and worse, 
but still kept a good Heart to the last. Indeed we 
were once in great Hope of his Recovery, upon a 
kind Message that was sent him from the Widow 
Lady whom he had made love to the Forty last 
Years of his Life ; but this only proved a Light'ning 
before Death. He has bequeathed to this Lady, as 
a token of his Love, a great Pearl Necklace, and a 
Couple of Silver Bracelets set with Jewels, which 
belonged to my good old Lady his Mother : He has 
bequeathed the fine white Gelding, that he used to 
ride a hunting upon, to his Chaplain, because he 
thought he would be kind to him, and has left you 
all his Books. He has, moreover, bequeathed to 
the Chaplain a very pretty Tenement with good 

1. Not necessarily to be referred to the butler's ignorance of 
good English, for the locution was common enough amongst well- 
educated men at this time. 



DEATH OF SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. 429 

Lands about it. It being a very cold Day when he 
made his Will, he left for Mourning, to every Man 
in the Parish, a great Frize-Coat, and to every 
Woman a black Riding-hood. It was a most mov- 
ing Sight to see him take leave of his poor Servants, 
commending us all for our Fidelity, whilst we were 
not able to speak a Word for weeping. As we 
most of us are grown Gray -headed in our Dear 
Master's Service, he has left us Pensions and Lega- 
cies, which we may live very comfortably upon, the 
remaining part of our Days. He has bequeath 'd a 
great deal more in Charity, which is not yet come to 
my Knowledge, and it is peremptorily said in the 
Parish, that he has left Mony to build a Steeple to 
the Church; for he was heard to say some time ago, 
that if he lived two Years longer, Coverly Church 
should have a Steeple to it. The Chaplain tells 
every body that he made a very good End, and 
never speaks of him without Tears. He was bur- 
ied, according to his own Directions, among the 
Family of the Covjerly'' 8^ on the Left Hand of his 
father Sir Arthur. The Coffin was carried by Six 
of his Tenants, and the Pall held up by Six of the 
Quorum: The whole Parish follow 'd the Corps with 
heavy Hearts, and in their Mourning Suits, the 
Men in Frize, and the Women in Piding-Hoods. 
Captain Sentky, my Master's Nephew, has taken 
Possession of the Hall-House, and the whole Estate. ^ 

1. Steele in The Spectator for November 24, 1712, makes a 
sort of postscript to this whole affair of Sir Roger by produ- 
cing a letter from Captain Sentry, written from Coverley Hall, 
Worcestershire, in which he says : " I am come to the succession 
of the estate of my honored kinsman. Sir Roger de Coverley ; 
and I assure you I find it no easy task to keep up the figure of 



430 SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. 

'When my old Master saw him a little before his 
'Death, he shook him by the Hand, and wished him 
' Jcy of the Estate which was falling to him, desiring 
'him only to make good Use of it, and to pay the 
'several Legacies, and the Gifts of Charity which he 
'told him he had left as Quitrents upon the Estate. 
'The Captain truly seems a courteous Man, though 
'he says but little. He makes much of those whom 
'my Master loved, and shows great Kindness to the 
'old House-dog, that you know my poor Master was 
'so fond of. It would have gone to your Heart to 
'have heard the Moans the dumb Creature made on 
'the Day of my Master's Death. He has ne'er joyed 
'himself since; no more has any of us. 'Twas the 
'melancholiest Day for the poor People that ever 
''happened in Worcestershire. This being all from, 
Honoured Sir, 
Your most Sorrowful Servant, 

Edward Biscuit. 

''P. S. My Master desired, some Weeks before 
'he died, that a Book which comes up to you by the 

master of the fortune whicli was so handsomely enjoyed by that 
honest plain man. I cannot (with respect to the great obliga- 
tions I have, be it spoken) reflect upon his character, but I am 
confirmed in the truth which I have, I think, heard spoken at 
the club, to wit, that a man of a warm and well-disposed heart 
with a very small capacity, is highly superior in human society 
to him who with the greatest talents, is cold and languid in his 
affections. But alas ! why do I make a difficulty in speaking of 
my worthy ancestor's failings ? His little absurdities and inca- 
pacity for the conversation of the politest men are dead with 
him, and his greater qualities are even now useful to him. I 
know not whether by naming those disabilities I do not enhance 
his merit, since he has left behind him a reputation in his coun- 
try which would be worth the pains of the wisest man's whole 
life to arrive at." 



DEATH OF SIR ROGER BE COVERLET. 431 

'Carrier should be given to Sir Andrew Freeport^ 
*in his Name.' 

This Letter, notwithstanding the poor Butler's 
Manner of writing it, gave us such an Idea of our 
good old Friend, that upon the reading of it there 
was not a dry Eye in the Club. Sir Andrew open- 
ing the Book, found it to be a Collection of Acts of 
Parliament. There was in particular the Act of 
Uniformity, with some Passages in it marked by Sir 
Hoger^s own Hand. Sir Andreio found that they 
related to two or three Points, which he had disputed 
with Sir Hoger the last time he appeared at the 
Club. Sir Andrew^ who would have been merry at 
such an Incident on another Occasion, at the sight of 
the old Man's Hand-writing burst into Tears, and 
put the Book into his Pocket. Captain Sentry in- 
forms me, that the Knight has left Rings and Mourn- 
ing for every one in the Club. 



JOHN MILTON. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

John Milton was born in the heart of London, Decem- 
ber 9, 1608. His father was born very near the time of 
Shakespeare's birth, and was a student at Oxford in his 
youth. It was while he was a student that England was 
wavering between Catholicism and Protestantism. The 
poet's grandfather held to the old order, and when his son 
was found leaning toward the new he disinherited him, and 
left him to his own devices. Thereupon the student went 
up to London, and shortly established himself as a scriv- 
ener, a term applied to men at that time who were copyists 
of legal documents, law stationers, and draftsmen also of 
legal papers. Milton the scrivener prospered, married, 
and had three children who lived, a daughter and two sons, 
John Milton being younger than his sister and seven years 
older than his brother. 

Thus the poet came of a father who sympathized with 
the new order of things, and who was a contemporary of 
Shakespeare. Shakespeare died when Milton was eight 
years old, but Milton was nearly thirty when Ben Jonson, 
who was more widely known than Shakespeare in his day, 
died, and he was eighteen years old when Bacon died. 
Milton's youth, therefore, was contemporaneous with the 
closing years of the august period of English dramatic 
poetry, and the glory of the spacious days of the great 
Queen Elizabeth was still within the near memory of men. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 433 

He grew up also in a time when there were mutterings of 
the rising storm which was to shake England to its centre. 
He must have heard much in his boyhood of the attempt 
made by King James to marry his son to a Spanish princess, 
an heir to the throne of Protestant England, and a daugh- 
ter of the house which was the stanch defender of the Pope, 
and the great rival and enemy of England in the days of 
EHzabeth. He must have been aware also of the widening 
breach between King and Parliament. He was seventeen 
years old when Charles I. ascended the throne. 

When this took place, Milton had just been entered at 
Christ's College, Cambridge. His schooldays had been 
spent in London at St. Paul's school. The great studies in 
which Milton was nurtured were Latin and Greek. The 
latter had been generally studied in school only for a gen- 
eration or so. It was a new study, very much as science is 
a new study now. Hebrew also was taught, and Milton 
studied it. Moreover, by his father's advice he learned 
to read and speak French and Italian. But besides his 
learned studies, Milton was a reader of English poetry. 
The first folio of Shakespeare's plays was published in 1623, 
when Milton was fifteen, and it is clear from his own writ- 
ing that he knew Shakespeare well ; but after all, Shake- 
speare was a great dramatist, and Milton was born out of 
the days when the drama was the great form. The poetry 
of English origin which he loved best was that of Edmund 
Spenser, whose Faerie Queene was published in 1590. 
Spenser has sometimes been called the poet's poet. He 
was Milton's at all events, and when we consider that the 
body of great English poetry which we know to-day con- 
sisted in Milton's time of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shake- 
speare, and that two of these poets were very modern to 
him, — for Milton to read Spenser was like our reading 
Tennyson, — we can see how largely he drew his poetic 
nourishment from classic literature. 

He gained distinction at the university. He was in favor 



434 JOHN MILTON. 

with the authorities, but unpopular, at first, with his fellow 
students, who nicknamed him " The Lady," both for the 
delicacy" of his appearance and for a certain reserve of 
demeanor. There is a picture extant of the poet at the 
age of ten. It is described as showing a grave, fair boy 
with auburn hair, having a neat lace frill and a black 
braided dress which fitted closely round his chest and arms. 
He was already called a little jDoet, and his father took the 
greatest pride in him, and taught him the music which he 
himself loved and knew well. This home-nurtured boy 
was the reserved, delicate-minded student, who kept aloof 
from coarse companionship as he had taken little part in 
boyish games. He was thought vain by his fellows, and 
there is no doubt that he did set a high value on his schol- 
arly and poetic tastes. There is another picture of the 
poet, taken at the age of twenty-one, which shows him a 
singularly clear-faced and handsome fellow. 

His father evidently intended John Milton to be a priest 
of the Church of England, but there were two forces which 
were at work in the student forbidding this. He was ac- 
quiring a certain independence of mind which made him 
out of sympathy with the growing ecclesiasticism, and he 
was cherishing a noble ambition to devote himself to high 
poetry. So, since his father had now retired from business 
and taken himself to a little village named Horton about 
seventeen miles west of London, here in the midst of green 
fields intersected by numberless brooks and small streams, 
he lived quietly and studiously for half a dozen years. It 
was during this musing country life in the flush of his open- 
ing power that he wrote the minor poems which would have 
given him a great place in English literature had he never 
written Paradise Lost ; for here he wrote the lovely pair 
of poems, L' Allegro and II Penseroso, here he penned 
the playful fancies which gave poetic dignity to festivals, 
Arcades and Comus, and here he wrote the elegy Lycidas, 
which rose above a personal lament into the place of a 
noble burst of patriotism. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, 435 

The last line of Lycidas seems to intimate a design on 
Milton's part to engage in new poetic enterprises, but if he 
had such design he laid it aside for a while to carry out 
a long-cherished plan of travel on the Continent. In the 
spring of 1638, he set out by easy stages for Italy, and in 
the fall he w^as in Florence. With his mind steeped in an- 
cient literature and feeding eagerly on the new Italian lit- 
erature and art, Milton seems to have had an intellectual 
feast, and the companionship which he held with the fore- 
most men in the cities he visited was of the same sort which 
he held with books. He demanded the best, and by his 
own attainments made himself welcomed by the best. He 
visited Galileo, then blind and living in retirement, and was 
constantly with men of scholarship and culture. At Rome 
he gave himself up to the life of the ancient city, and he 
was planning further journeys w^hen news came to him at 
Naples that turned him homeward. 

"While I was desirous," he says, "to cross into Sicily 
and Greece, the sad news of civil war coming from Eng- 
land called me back ; for I considered it disgraceful that, 
while my fellow countrymen were fighting at home for lib- 
erty, I should be travelling abroad at ease for intellectual 
purposes." The civil war did more than break up Milton's 
plans for travel ; it changed the whole course of his life as 
he had laid it out. For twenty years the poet was lost to 
view in the patriot, the scholar, the man of public affairs. 

During this stormy period Milton maintained himself as 
a schoolmaster, but gave his energy to his writings. The 
volume of his prose greatly exceeds that of his poetry, but 
it is like the editorial work of newspapers, very effective 
for its purpose at the time when written and published, but 
quite lost to sight afterward. There are one or two of his 
books, however, especially the one called Areopagitica; or 
the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, which are still read 
for their noble English and their great thoughts. For the 
most part, however, his pamphlets were crowded with argu- 



436 JOHN MILTON. 

ments and invective meant to do execution in the heat of 
wordy warfare. During the latter part of the period he 
was Latin Secretary of the Commonwealth under Crom- 
well ; that is, it was his business to translate dispatches to 
and from foreign governments. In the midst of all this 
clamorous din of public affairs, there came from him those 
noble spontaneous sonnets which were promjDted by the 
massacre in Piedmont, and by his friendship for Cromwell 
and Vane. 

There is an affecting sonnet also on his blindness, for in 
1652, when he was forty-three years old, a gradual failing 
of sight had ended in total blindness. Thus when the end 
of his hopes for England seemed to have come and the 
kingdom was restored in 1660, Milton was a poor, blind 
man, driven into obscurity by the incoming to power of 
those he had opposed all his life. How strongly he felt 
this is seen in his dramatic piece, Samson Agonistes. 

For a while Milton was in hiding, and he was forced to 
give up much of what property he had. He lost besides 
by fire, but though poor in worldly goods and blind, his 
mind to him a kingdom was, and so, bidding good-by to 
courts and the whirl of public life, he returned to a schol- 
ar's ways. The stream which had been diverted returned 
to the channel of poetry, and the story of his last years 
is the story of writing Paradise Lost and Paradise Re- 
gained. He listened to readers and he dictated *his poems. 
In his youth he had pondered over large schemes of verse. 
Now in his old age, after taking part in a revolution which 
had been set in motion by love of liberty and a deep re- 
ligious earnestness, he took the great theme of the human 
race in its relation to God. The largeness of the poet's 
ideal, a largeness which had been before him all his life, 
finds expression in this great epic, just as the beauty which 
he loved finds expression in the group of poems printed in 
this little collection. 

Milton died November 8, 1674. 



L' ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO. 

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

The titles of these two poems intimate their contrasted 
character. Milton was deep in his Italian studies when he 
wrote of The Joyous Man and The Pensive One, as the 
titles may freely be rendered. The balance of parts is 
preserved, and in the notes will occasionally be found specific 
reminders, but it is more in accordance with the spirit of 
the interpretation of poetry to look for the contrasts in 
masses and in broad counterparts. The scheme, indeed, is 
slightly artificial, and it may be guessed that Milton with 
his reflecting nature should have written the second of the 
poems first, at any rate that he should have given himself 
to its composition more freely. The two poems are indeed 
like two pieces of music, one in a major, the other in the 
minor key, and poetry is apt to find in the minor key a 
wider range of expression. It would be a good exercise to 
work out the parallel and contrast which underlie the two 
poems. It should never be lost out of sight in reading them 
that they are not descriptive verses, but poems in which 
nature and human nature alike are seen under 

" The light that never was, on sea or land, 
The consecration, and the Poet's dream." 

Both poems appear to have been written between 1632 and 
1638. 



I. 

L' ALLEGRO. 

Hence, loathed Melancholy, 

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born, 
In Stygian cave forlorn, 

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights 
unholy, 
5 Find out some uncouth cell, 

Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous 
wings, 
And the night-raven sings ; 

There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks, 
As ragged as thy locks, 
10 In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. 
But come thou Goddess fair and free. 
In heav'n yclep'd Euphrosyne, 
And by men, heart-easing Mirth, 
Whom lovely Venus at a birth 
15 With two sister Graces more 
To iA^-crowned Bacchus bore ; 

2. So natural is this parentage, that at first one is half dis- 
posed to think this was an ancient myth instead of an invention 
of Milton's. But a moment's reflection upon the word in its origin, 
for in Greek " melancholy " is " black bile," reminds one how 
readily the ancients resolved mental disorder into physical ail. 

8. Loiv-hrowed, overhanging. 

14. At a birth. As we say one at a time ; so here, it is 
equivalent to three at one birth. 

15. The tioo sister Graces are Meat and Drink. 



U ALLEGRO. 439 

Or whether (as some sager sing) 

The frolic wind that breathes the spring, 

Zephyr with Aurora playing, 

20 As he met her once a Maying, 
There on beds of violets blue. 
And fresh-blown roses washt in dew, 
Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair, 
So buxom, blithe, and debonair, 

25 Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee 
Jest and youthful Jollity, ' 

Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, 
Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Smiles, 
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, 

30 And love to live in dimple sleek ; 
Sport that wrinkled Care derides, 
And Laughter holding both his sides. 
Come, and trip it as ye go 
On the light fantastic toe, 

35 And in thy right hand lead with thee 
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty ; 

28. Wreathed Smiles. The fundamental sense of wreath is a twist, 
but its association with flowers and clouds seems for the most 
part to have relieved it from the notion of pain which attaches 
to its other form writhe, and here, therefore, wreathed Smiles is 
offset against wrinkled Care. 

33. Trip it. From a poetic and literary use, such a form has 
fallen almost exclusively into colloquial use. We should hardly 
expect to find "go it," for example, in a piece of literature, 
though in a few phrases, as " lord it," literature still avails itself 
of the form. See, for this line and the next, Shakespeare's The 
Tempest, IV. i. 146. 

36. One frequently finds in Milton, in consequence of his lofty 
spirit, touched with large visions of political and religious life, 
passages which seem very modern and familiar, as in this asso- 
ciation of freedom with the mountains, which is a note heard 
most frequently in poetry from Wordsworth down. 



440 JOHN MILTON. 

And if I give thee honor due, 
Mirth, admit me of thy crew. 
To live with her, and live with thee, 

40 In unreproved pleasures free ; 
To hear the lark begin his flight. 
And singing startle the dull night. 
From his watch-tower in the skies, 
Till the dappled dawn doth rise ; 

45 Then to come in spite of sorrow, 
And at my window bid good morrow, 
Through the sweet-briar, or the vine. 
Or the twisted eglantine : 
While the cock, with lively din, 

50 Scatters the rear of darkness thin. 
And to the stack, or the barn door. 
Stoutly struts his dames before : 
Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn 
Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring morn, 

55 From the side of some hoar hill. 
Through the high wood echoing shrill : 
Some time walking not unseen. 
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green, 
Eight against the eastern gate, 

60 Where the great sun begins his state, 
Rob'd in flames, and amber light, 

38. Crew. In Milton's time the simple sense of a gathering, 
a crowd, prevailed in the use of this word, though the contemptu- 
ous intonation also occasionally was heard, 

45. To come. More fully this would he " to see him come," 
as before Milton wrote " to hear the lark begin." 

In spite of sorrow, to spite sorrow. 

52. Struts is not a transitive verb. The action is completed 
in the previous line. So in this line the preposition is made a 
postposition. 

55. Hoar, white with frost. 



U ALLEGRO. 441 

The clouds in thousand liveries dight, 

While the plowman near at hand 

Whistles o'er the furrow'd land, 
65 And the milkmaid singe th blithe, 

And the mower whets his scythe, 

And every shepherd tells his tale 

Under the hawthorn in the dale. 

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, 
70 Whilst the landscape round it measures 

Russet lawns, and fallows gray. 

Where the nibbling flocks do stray ; 

Mountains on whose barren breast 

The laboring clouds do often rest : 
75 Meadows trim with daisies pied. 

Shallow brooks, and rivers wide. 

Towers, and battlements it sees 

Bosom'd high in tufted trees. 

Where perhaps some beauty lies, 
80 The cynosure of neighboring eyes. 

Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes, 

From betwixt two aged oaks. 

Where Corydon and Thyrsis met, 

67. Tells his tale, keeps his tally. We still use the word tell 
with this meaning in the phrase " to tell off." Tale is closely 
allied to tally. 

68. See Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, line 13. 

71. Lawn had not in Milton's time the exclusive significance 
of level open space about a dwelling. It was simply any open 
grassy place, and here means pasture. 

Fallow again means here grassy, overgrown, neglected til- 
lage. The colors which Milton assigns are rather the dull colors 
of browsing ground than nicely discriminated hues of different 
earths. 

78. We are more familiar with the meaning of hosorrCd here 
when it takes the form " embosomed." 

79. Lies, dwells. 



442 JOHN MILTON. 

Are at their savory dinner set 
85 Of herbs, and other country messes, 

Which the neat-handed Phyllis di'esses ; 

And then in haste her bower she leaves, 

With Thestylis to bind the sheaves ; 

Or if the earlier season lead, 
90 To the tann'd haycock in the mead. 

Sometimes with secure delight 

The up-land hamlets will invite, 

When the merry bells ring round. 

And the jocund rebecks sound 
95 To many a youth, and many a maid. 

Dancing in the chequer'd shade ; 

And young and old come forth to play 

On a sunshine holy day. 

Till the live-long day-light fail. 
100 Then to tha spicy nut-brown ale. 

With stories told of many a feat. 

How faery Mab the junkets eat. 

She was pincht and pull'd, she said. 

And he by friars' lanthorn led, 

88. Both Phyllis and Thestylis are rustic maidens in classic 
poetry, and so adopted by Milton, as he had already used the 
names of Thyrsis and Corydon. 

91. Secure has here its first derivative meaning, sine cura, free 
from care. 

92. Up-land, rustic, clear country, rather than necessarily 
high ground. 

96. Chequered. Shakespeare, in Titus Andronicus, II. iii. 14, 

15, happily defines this word : — 

" The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind 
And make a chequer'd shadow on the ground." 

102. Here, as so often, Milton reminds us of his familiarity 
with Shakespeare. See A Midsummer Niglifs Dream, II. i. 

104. And he. In the liveliness of the scene Milton is indiffer- 
ent to a nice discrimination of persons. There is a jumble of 



U ALLEGRO, 443 

105 Tells how the drudging goblin sweat, 
To earn his cream-bowl duly set, 
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, 
His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn 
That ten day-laborers could not end ; 

no Then lies him down the lubber-fiend, 

And stretch'd out all the chimney's length, 
Basks at the fire his hairy strength ; 
And crop-full out of doors he flings, 
Ere the first cock his matin rinp's. 

115 Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, 
By whispering winds soon luU'd asleep. 
Towered cities please us then. 
And the busy hum of men, 
Where throngs of knights and barons bold 

120 In weeds of peace high triumphs hold, 
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes 

male and. female voices. A maid-servant says slie was " piucht 
and pull'd." In breaks a man-servant with his story, how he 
was misled by a will-o'-the-wisp. Another still, it may be, tells 
how Robin Goodfellow toiled. The Norwegians have the same 
story of a goblin, and peasants still set out bowls of porridge for 
him. 

108. Hath. Hales asserts that Milton does not use the form 
has. 

109. End, make an end of. 

110. Luhber-Jiend. Mrs. Ewing has a pretty tale, of Lob 
Lie-hy-the-Fire. The old word Lob still lingers in New England 
in Lob Lane in the country. Indeed, it is to be suspected that 
many a love-lane is a modernization of this old form. 

117. The force of then will be understood better if it is read, 
as the first word in the line. It does not point to the time of 
the preceding line, but is a word of transition. 

120. Weeds, garments. The word in this significance is used 
now only of mourning garments. For the phrase " weeds of 
peace," see Troilus and Cressida, III. iii. 239. 



444 JOHN MILTON. 

Rain influence, and judge the prize 
Of wit, or arms, while both contend 
To win her grace, whom all commend. 

125 There let Hymen oft appear 
In saffron robe, with taper clear. 
And pomp, and feast, and revelry, 
With mask, and antique pageantry, 
Such sights as youthful poets dream 

130 On summer eves by haunted stream. 
Then to the well-trod stage anon. 
If Jonson's learned sock be on. 
Or sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child, 
Warble his native wood-notes wild. 

135 And ever against eating cares. 
Lap me in soft Lydian airs, 
Married to immortal verse, 
Such as the meeting soul may pierce 

125. As masques were often pageants in connection with the 
marriage festivities of the nobility, the figure of Hymen was a 
frequent one. Mr. Hales quotes here from Ben Jonson's Hymencei 
or the Solemnities of Masque and Barrier at a Marriage : ' ' En- 
tered Hymen ... in a saffron-colored robe, his under vestures 
white, his socks yellow, a yellow veil of silk on his left arm, 
his head crowned with roses and marjoram, in his right hand a 
torch of pine-tree." 

132. Milton himself, a lover of learning, emphasizes the dis- 
tinction which was common in his day between Ben Jonson, who 
wrote with the classics always in his thought, and was the cor- 
rect, regular dramatist of the day, and Shakespeare, whose free, 
unrestrained manner delighted Milton, though he set him down 
as not in the succession of classic poets. 

135. Eating cares is an exact translation _of a passage in 
Horace ; but the Biblical phrase " the zeal of thy house hath 
eaten me up " is a similar use. 

136. Lydian airs were soft and voluptuous. 

138. Pierce. The rhyme shows how this word was pronounced 
by Milton. Now and then one hears the pronunciation as an 



IL PENSEROSO. 445 

111 notes, with many a winding bout 
140 Of linked sweetness long drawn out, 

With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, 

The melting voice through mazes running ; 

Untwisting all the chains that tie 

The hidden soul of harmony ; 
145 That Orpheus' self may heave his head 

From golden slumber on a bed 

Of heapt Elysian flowers, and hear 

Such strains as would have won the ear 

Of Pluto, to have quite set free 
150 His half regain'd Eurydice. 

These delights, if thou canst give, 

Mirth, with thee I mean to live. 



II. 
IL PENSEROSO. 

Hence vain deluding joys, 

The brood of folly without father bred, 
How little you bested. 

Or fiU the fixed mind with all your toys ; 
5 Dwell in some idle brain. 

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, 
As thick and numberless 

As the gay motes that people the sunbeams. 
Or likest hovering dreams 

old-fashioned one, but it is not infrequently so sounded as a 
proper name. 

145. Heave was not in Milton's time, as now, so associated 
with the idea heavy. It was simply to raise, and not necessarily 
to raise an anchor. 

2. That is, vain deluding joys which are due to folly alone. 

6. Fond, foolish. 



446 JOHN MILTON. 

10 The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train. 

But hail, thou goddess, sage and holy, 

Hail, divinest Melancholy, 

Whose saintly visage is too bright 

To hit the sense of human sight, 
15 And therefore to our weaker view, 

O'erlaid with black, staid wisdom's hue. 

Black, but such as in esteem 

Prince Memnon's sister might beseem, 

Or that starr'd Ethiope queen that strove 
20 To set her beauty's praise above 

The Sea-Nymphs, and their powers offended. 

Yet thou art higher far descended, 

Thee bright-hair'd Vesta, long of yore. 

To solitary Saturn bore ; 
25 His daughter she (in Saturn's reign. 

Such mixture was not held a stain) 

Oft in glimmering bowers and glades 

He met her, and in secret shades 

Of woody Ida's inmost grove, 
30 While yet there was no fear of Jove. 

Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure. 

Sober, steadfast, and demure. 

All in a robe of darkest grain, 

19. Starr'd Ethiope queen. Cassiopeia, fabled to have been 
made a constellation. 

20. The story runs that she boasted of her beauty above that 
of the Nereids, and for punishment was made, when among the 
stars, to be turning backward. 

22. Higher, more highly. 

23. Vesta was the goddess of the hearth, and the fitness of 
the parentage, which is of Milton's devising, steals out of the 
lines that follow. 

30. Yet, as yet. 

33. A 11. So " all on a summer's day." Milton uses grain for 
Tyrian purple. 



IL PENSEROSO. 447 

Flowing with majestic train, 
35 And sable stole of cyprus-lawn, 

Over thy decent shoulders drawn. 

Come, but keep thy wonted state, 

With ev'n step, and musing gait, 

And looks commercing with the skies, 
40 Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes : 

There held in holy passion still, 

Forget thyself to marble, till 

With a sad leaden downward cast, 

Thou fix them on the earth as fast. 
45 And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet, 

Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet. 

And hears the Muses in a ring, 

Aye round about Jove's altar sing. 

And add to these retired Leisure, 
50 That in trim gardens takes his pleasure ; 

But first, and chiefest, with thee bring, 

Him that yon soars on golden wing. 

Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne. 

The cherub Contemplation ; 
55 And the mute Silence hist along, 

35. Cyprus-lawn, black crape. See Autolycus' song iu 
Shakespeare's The Winter^s Tale, IV. iv. 

36. Decent, comely. 
41. Still is an adjective. 

49. Leisure. Milton wrote tliis leasure. 

53. Milton knew his Bible, especially the Old Testament, well. 
See Ezekiel, chapter x. 

54. Note that contemplation has five syllables. Other similar 
cases may be noted. 

55. Hist. A curious use of the word. Hales says it is equiv- 
alent to "bring silently along." Is it not possible that Milton, 
having adjured Melancholy to come as his companion, and to 
bring for other company Peace, Quiet, spare Fast, and retired 
Leisure, but above all the cherub Contemplation, treats Silence 



448 JOHN MILTON. 

'Less Philomel will deign a song, 

In her sweetest, saddest plight, 

Smoothing the rugged brow of night, 

While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke, 
60 Gently o'er th' accustom'd oak ; 

Sweet bird that shunn'st the noise of folly, 

Most musical, most melancholy ! 

Thee chantress oft the woods among, 

I woo to hear thy even-song ; 
65 And missing thee, I walk unseen 

On the dry smooth-shaven green, 

To behold the wand'ring moon, 

Riding near her highest noon. 

Like one that had been led astray 
70 Through the heav'n's wide pathless way ; 

And oft, as if her head she bow'd. 

Stooping through a fleecy cloud. 

Oft on a plat of rising ground, 

I hear the far-off curfew sound, 
75 Over some wide-water'd shore. 

Swinging low with sullen roar ; 

Or if the air will not permit. 

Some still removed place will fit, 

itself as a dumb dog, and so uses the word which would apply 
to the ordering of a dog, — 'st Silence ! 

61. Noise is not necessarily disagreeable sound in Milton. 

64. Even-song. Milton uses here an ecclesiastical phrase in 
familiar use then, just as in L* Allegro, 1. 114, he refers to the 
matin of the cock. This is one of the distinctly contrasted 
points in the two poems. 

65. Unseen. See X' Allegro, 1. 57. 

68. Noon. The night in this poem is the full period, and the 
noon of the moon corresponds thus to midnight. 

77. That is, if the weather forbids this out-door consorting 
with Melancholy, then some room still and remote. 



IL PENSEROSO. 449 

Wliere glowing embers through the room 

80 Teach light to counterfeit a gloom ; 
Far from all resort of mirth, 
Save the cricket on the hearth, 
Or the bellman's drowsy charm, 
To bless the doors from nightly harm : 

85 Or let my lamp at midnight hour, 
Be seen in some high lonely tower. 
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear, 
With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere 
The spirit of Plato, to unfold 

90 What worlds, or what vast regions hold 
The immortal mind, that hath forsook 
Her mansion in this fleshly nook : 
And of those daemons that are found 
In fire, air, flood, or under ground, 

95 Whose power hath a true consent 
With planet, or with element. 
Sometime let gorgeous tragedy 
In scepter'd pall come sweeping by, . 
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line, 

80. This line readily suggests the lines in Paradise Lost, I. 61- 
64. 

" A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, 
As one great furnace, flam'd ; yet from those flames 
No light, but rather darkness visible 
Serv'd only to discover sights of woe." 

84. Nightly, in the night time. 

88. Thrice-great Hermes, Hermes Trismegistiis. 

Unsphere. The implication of the word is that the spirit of 
' Plato is dwelling in a sphere apart from this world ; to unsphere 
the spirit, therefore, is to bring him out of that sphere down to 
the world, where he may disclose the secret of immortality. 

96. When Milton wrote, astrology was not consigned to the 
care of cheap fortune tellers. 

98. Scepter'd pall, that is, in robes worn by a king bearing 
a sceptre. 



450 JOHN MILTON. 

100 Or the tale of Troy divine. 

Or what (though rare) of later age 
Ennobled hath the buskin'd stage. 
But, O sad Virgin, that thy power 
Might raise Musseus from his bower, 

105 Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing 
Such notes as warbled to the string. 
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek. 
And made Hell grant what Love did seek. 
Or call up him that left half told 

no The story of Cambuscan bold, 
Of Camball, and of Algarsife, 
And who had Canace to wife, 
That own'd the virtuous ring and glass, 
And of the w^ondrous horse of brass, 

115 On which the Tartar king did ride ; 
And if aught else, great bards beside, 

100. These three were the great subjects of Greek tragedy. 

101. Though rare. These words in parenthesis seem to inti- 
mate the critical attitude which Milton took toward the English 
drama. He was writing when the great Elizabethan period had 
closed and popular taste was turning to other than Shakespeare's 
plays. 

106. Warbled. A comma placed before this word would 
show at once its grammatical place. 

109. Him. Chaucer. 

110. Camhuscan, Cambres-Khan, Chaucer, who writes the 
word Cambyuscan, throws the accent on the first syllable. 

112. The names Camballo, Algarsyf, and Canace all occur in 
the story as Chaucer tells it. See The Squire's Tale. 

113. Virtuous, possessing power. When the revisers of the 
New Testament came to Mark vi. 30, and read, " And Jesus, 
immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of 
him," they saw that the old English sense had disappeared from 
common use, and they made it to read " And straightway Jesus, 
perceiving in himself that the poxyev proceeding horn him had 
gone forth." 



IL PENS EROS 0. 451 

In sage and solemn tunes have sung, 
Of tourneys and of trophies hung ; 
Of forests, and enchantments drear, 

120 Where more is meant then meets the ear. 
Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career. 
Till Civil-suited Morn appear, 
Not trickt and frounct as she was wont, 
With the Attick boy to hunt, 

125 But ker chief 'd in a comely cloud. 
While rocking winds are piping loud. 
Or usher'd with a shower still. 
When the gust hath blown his fill. 
Ending on the rustling leaves, 

130 With minute drops from off the eaves. 
And when the sun begins to fling 
His flaring beams, me. Goddess, bring 
To arched walks of twilight groves. 
And shadows brown that Sylvan loves 

135 Of pine, or monumental oak. 

Where the rude axe with heaved stroke 
Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt, 

120. This is especially true of Spenser's great allegory of 
The Faerie Queene, which Milton no doubt had in mind, as 
well as the poems of Ariosto, Tasso, and other Italian romantic 
writers with whom he was very familiar. The use of then for 
than shows the derivation of the latter form. 

122. Compare Romeo and Juliet, III. ii. : — 

" Come, civil night, 
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black." 

The use of suit for clothing is common enough now. In U Al- 
legro, morn was decked out showily. 

124. Attich hoy. In Ovid's story, Aurora or the Dawn was 
in love with Cephalus and went out hunting with him. 

134. Sylvan, Sylvanus, or Pan, the woody god. 

135. Monumental. Another favorite word applied by poets 
to majestic trees is immemorial. 



452 JOHN MILTON. 

Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt. 
There in close covert by some brook, 

140 Where no profaner eye may look, 
Hide me from day's garish eye, 
While the bee with honeyed thigh, 
That at her flow'ry work doth sing, 
And the waters murmuring 

145 With such consort as they keep. 
Entice the dewy-f eather'd sleep ; 
And let some strange mysterious dream, 
Wave at his wings in airy stream, 
Of lively portraiture display'd, 

150 Softly on my eyelids laid. 

And as I wake, sweet music breathe 
Above, about, or underneath. 
Sent by some spirit to mortals good. 
Or th' unseen Genius of the wood. 

155 But let my due feet never fail 
To walk the studious cloisters pale, 

140. " Profaner = somewhat, or at all profane = profanis^, 
if there were such a word. Such is frequently the force in 
Latin also of what is called the comparative degree : thus senior 
= somewhat old, elderly." Hales. 

145. Consort, musical concert. 

150. The four lines closing with this are somewhat perplex- 
ing, chiefly because of the insertion of at in the phrase " wave 
at his wings." The most reasonable interpretation appears to 
be that which understands a reflection in the airy stream ; the 
dream hovering over the airy stream sees below his winged 
movement repeated, and as in Wordsworth, we see — 

" The swan on still St. Mary's Lake 
Float double, swan and shadow," — 

so here the sleeper's imagination descries the double image. 

153. Mortals good, the good of mortals, 

156. Studious cloisters pale, i. e., to walk a cloistered inclos- 
ure devoted to study and learning. We use the phrase " with- 



IL PENSEROSO. 453 

And love the higli embowed roof, 
With antique pillars massy proof, 
And storied windows richly dight, 

160 Casting a dim religious light. 
There let the pealing organ blow. 
To the full voic'd Quire below, 
In service high, and anthems clear. 
As may with sweetness, through mine ear, 

165 Dissolve me into ecstasies, 

And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes. 
And may at last my weary age 
Find out the peaceful hermitage. 
The hairy gown and mossy cell, 

170 Where I may sit and rightly spell. 
Of every star that heav'n doth shew. 
And every herb that sips the dew ; 
Till old experience do attain 
To something like prophetic strain. 

175 These pleasures Melancholy give. 
And I with thee will choose to live. 

out the pale of the church," and the word reappears in palings, 
fences, that is, marking the pale or inclosure. 

157. It has been well said by Mr. Hales that " Milton was one 
of the latest true lovers of Gothic architecture when the taste 
for it was declining, as Gray was one of the earliest when the 
taste was reviving." 

158. Massy, massive ; proof, able to bear the great weight 
resting on the pillars. 

162. It is comparatively in recent times that quire has be- 
come cJioir. 

164. As, such as. 

174. Prophetic. Milton's use of the word was undoubtedly 
that of his generation, in which the predictive idea was not 
prominent, but the interpretative. 



LYCIDAS. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



Lycidas was first published as the last of a group of 
poems in memory of Edward King, a fellow-collegian of 
Milton's, who had written some poems himself, but was 
looking to a place as a priest in the Church of England ; 
he was shipwrecked when on his way across the Irish chan- 
nel, sailing from England to Ireland. In the volume which 
was published in the winter of 1637-38, Milton gave no 
title to the poem, and signed the poem simply with his 
initials, J. M. ; but when he placed it in his first collection 
of poems in 1645, he gave it the title it bears. He took 
the name Lycidas from that of a shepherd in one of Vir- 
gil's Eclogues. The reader of the Eclogues will note not 
merely names like Lycidas, Amaryllis, Damsetas, Nesera, 
which Milton has borrowed from Virgil, but many felici- 
tous phrases which are deft translations from the Eclogues. 

The entire conceit of shepherds and their songs which 
runs through Lycidas was familiar not only in Roman but 
in English verse ; but Milton, using it first as a slight veil 
to cast over personal associations, lifts the conception into 
dignity and a grave value above personal lament, by his 
bitter reproach of the shepherds of the sheepfold of the 
church. When he republished Lycidas in his own collec- 
tion, he wrote : "In this Monody the author bewails a 
learned friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from 
Chester on the Irish seas, 1637 ; and by occasion foretells the 
ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their height.'^ The 
words in italic show how his mind was stirring, and how 
deeply he was reflecting on the great religious contentions of 



LYCIDAS. 455 

his country. England was on the eve of civil war, and the 
firm hand of the ecclesiastical authorities was lying heavily 
on many men's consciences. It is not strange, therefore, 
that the lighter strains which sounded in X' Allegro, II Pen- 
seroso, and Comus here pass into those organ notes which 
were to be heard after a score of years fully and in sus- 
tained measure in Paradise Lost. 



LYCIDAS. 

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more 
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, 
I come to pluck your berries liarsh and crude, 
And with forc'd fingers rude, 

5 Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. 
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear. 
Compels me to disturb your season due : 
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime. 
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. 
10 Who would not sing for Lycidas ? He knew 
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. 
He must not float upon his wat'ry bier 
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind. 
Without the meed of some melodious tear. 

15 Begin then Sisters of the sacred well, 

1. Yet once more. Milton was now in the full tide of his first 
period of verse, and as he attacks this new subject it is with 
a fresh consciousness of his high poetic errand ; and as the open- 
ing lines show, in a figure which disregards strict literalness of 
parallel, with a keen sense of the untimely fate which calls out 
his poetic speech. 

6. Dear, dire. 

10. Readers of Virgil will note the likeness to neget quis car- 
mina Gallo in the tenth Eclogue. 

13. Welter, rise and fall with the waves. 

15. Milton, who looks for his models to classic rather than ear- 
lier English verse, follows the almost uniform mode of elegiac 
verse in this summons to the muses who dwell by Helicon, 



LYCIDAS. 457 

That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring. 

Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string. 

Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse; 

So may some gentle Muse 
20 With lucky words favour my destin'd urn, 

And, as he passes, turn, 

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud. 

For we were nurst upon the self -same hill. 

Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill. 
25 Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd 

Under the opening eyelids of the morn. 

We drove a-field, and both together heard 

What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn, 

Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night, 
30 Oft till the Star that rose, at ev'ning, bright 

Toward Heav'n's descent had slop'd his westering 
wheel. 

Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute. 

Temper' d to th' oaten flute, 

'Eough Satyrs danc'd, and Fauns with clov'n heel 
35 From the glad sound would not be absent long, 

And old Damsetas lov'd to hear our song. 

16. Milton drew this from the Greek poet Hesiod. 

19. Muse, poet. 

20. The accent in reading should be on my, since the poet is 
wishing for a future reward of verse for himself, like that he is 
about to bestow. 

23. It should be remembered that the singer of this monody 
feigns himself and Lycidas, after the manner of ancient verse, 
to be shepherds. The actual fact was that they had a common 
college. 

28. Gray-jly, otherwise the trumpet-fly. 

33. The fiction of shepherd life is continued. In fancy the 
rude pipe made of straw is played on, the rural ditties being 
tempered or set to it. 

36. Damcetas. Theocritus and Virgil used this name for the 



458 JOHN MILTON. 

But O tlie heavy change, now thou art gone, 

Now thou art gone, and never must return ! 

Thee Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves 
40 With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, 

And all their echoes mourn. 

The willows, and the hazel copses green, 

Shall now no more be seen, 

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. 
45 As killing as the canker to the rose, 

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, 

Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear, 

When first the white-thorn blows ; 

Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear. 
50 Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless 
deep 

Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas ? 

For neither were ye playing on the steep, 

Where your old Bards, the famous Druids, lie, 

Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, 
55 Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream : 

Ay me, I fondly dream ! 

Had ye been there — for what could that have done? 

What could the Muse herself, that Orpheus bore, 

herdsmen in their pastorals. It is suggested that Milton was 
making playful reference to the tutor of King and himself, W. 
Chappell, of Christ's College. 

38. Must. If Milton had said wilt, he would have implied 
that Lycidas could but would not ; must declares that he is under 
constraint. 

41. The echoes are thus made individual voices of nature. 

53. The fact that King was shipwrecked when making pass- 
age from England to Ireland explains why Milton thus chooses 
Welsh headlands and the river Dee (JDeva) with their early po- 
etic associations. 

56. Fondly. See II Penseroso, line 6. 



LYCIDAS. 459 

The Muse herself, for her enchanting son, 
60 Whom universal nature did lament, 

When by the rout that made the hideous roar, 

His gory visage down the stream was sent, 

Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore ? 
Alas ! what boots it with uncessant care 
65 To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, 

And strictly meditate the thankless Muse ? 

Were it not better done as others use. 

To sport with Amaryllis in the shade. 

Or with the tangles of Nesera's hair ? 
70 Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 

(That last infirmity of noble mind) 

To scorn delights, and live laborious days ; 

But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, 

63. Milton derives from Virgil chiefly the story of Orpheus. 
He was a famous mythical poet, son of the muse Calliope. So 
enchanting was his song that he could move trees and rocks and 
wild beasts. He descended into the lower world after his wife 
Eurydice, who had died, and^o prevailed upon Persephone with 
his song that she let Eurydice return with him ; but he for- 
feited her before they reached the upper air through his diso- 
bedience in looking back upon the passage they had threaded. 
He was torn in pieces by the Thracian Msenads because of the 
hatred he inspired by his loss of Eurydice. They cast his head 
and lyre into the Hebrus, which bore these remains to Lesbos, 
where they were buried. 

66. Milton's own high devotion to his art is here intimated. 
There is a Virgilian phrase in the line. Virgil in Eclogue I. 

line 2, wrote, — 

" Sylvestrem tenui Musam meditaris avena," 

which Sydney Smith jocosely translated, " We cultivate litera- 
ture on a little oatmeal." 

67. Use, are wont. We use the past form only in this sig- 
nificance. 

69. Amaryllis, Necera. These are but names only. The for- 
mer is a Virgilian remembrance. 



460 JOHN MILTON. 

And tliink to burst out into sudden blaze, 

75 Comes tlie blind Fury with tli' abhorred shears, 
And slits the thin-spun life. But not the praise, 
Phoebus replied, and touch'd my trembling ears ; 
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil. 
Nor in the glistering foil 

80 Set off to th' world, nor in broad rumor lies ; 
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes. 
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove ; 
As he pronounces lastly on each deed. 
Of so much fame in Heav'n expect thy meed. 

85 O fountain Arethuse, and thou honor 'd flood. 
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown'd with vocal reeds. 
That strain I heard was of a higher mood ; 
But now my oat proceeds. 
And listens to the Herald of the Sea 

90 That came in Neptune's plea ; 
He ask'd the waves, and ask'd the felon winds. 
What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain? 
And question'd every gust^of rugged wings 
That blows from off each beaked promontory : 

74. Blaze. 

" For what is glory but the blaze of fame ? " 

Paradise Regained, iii. 47. 

75. Fury. In ancient mythology, as Milton knew well, it was 
the office of one of the three Fates to snip the thread of life. 
The use of fury may have been accidental, or, wanting a dis- 
syllable, the poet may have used his authority in handling classic 
traditions — more than once he invents his classic myths — to 
put the shears into the hands of a blind fury as a more dramatic 
personage for his purpose. 

79. Foil. Fame, the poet says, is of immortal growth ; nor 
does it lie either in some shining contrast or in broad rumor. 

81. By, under the light of. 

86. Mincius. A remembrance of Virgil, Georgics, iii. 13-15. 
The poet there offers to build a votive offering by the Mincio. 



LYCIDAS. 461 

95 They knew not of his story, 

And sage Hippotades their answer brings, 

That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd ; 

The air was cahn, and on the level brine 

Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd. 
100 It was that fatal and perfidious bark. 

Built in th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark. 

That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. 
Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow. 

His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge, 
105 Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge 

Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe. 

Ah ! Who has reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge ? 

Last came, and last did go. 

The Pilot of the Galilean lake ; 
no Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, 

(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain) 

He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake ; 

" How well could I have spar'd for thee, young 
swain, 

96. Hippotades, ^olus, son of Hippotas. 

97. Was strayed. This form still lingers with us, but it sounds 
to most a little stiff. It holds, however, in academic use, as 
when we say a man was graduated from college. 

103. Camus. It will be remembered that King was from the 
college on the Cam. 

Went, wended his way. 

104. Bonnet. The Scotch still use this word for male as well 
as female head covering. 

106. Like, i. e. a figure like. Sanguine flower, the hyacinth. 

111. To know the uses of the keys one needs but to recall the 
charge to St. Peter. 

112. Mitred locks. Milton was writing in a time when Epis- 
copacy was a question of the hour. He himself was opposed to 
Episcopacy as he saw it, but the true overseeing of. souls was an- 
other matter, and thus he makes St. Peter a bishop. 



462 JOHN MILTON. 

Enaw of sucli as for their bellies' sake 
115 Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ? 
Of other care they little reck'ning make, 
Than how to scramble at the shearer's feast, 
And shove away the worthy bidden guest ; 
Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how 
to hold 
120 A sheep-hook, or have learn'd ought else the least 
That to the faithful herdman's art belongs ! 
What recks it them ? What need they ? They are 

sped; 
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw, 
125 The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed. 

But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, 
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 

114-131. In this terrible indictment by St. Peter of the 
priestly shepherds of the flock of English souls, Milton pours 
out with impassioned words his own stern judgment. For the 
satisfaction of carnal desires such shepherds enter the fold by 
various doors other than the one door ; for Milton could not for- 
get the parable of shepherd and fold from the lips of the Great 
Shepherd. They creep, that is, they enter by intrigue and cun- 
ning ; they intrude, thrust themselves in with insolence ; they 
climb, seek ambitiously for their own ends to mount step by 
step to high dignities. As the bishop is one who by his name 
oversees, so these are blind ; as' the pastor is one who feeds 
another, so the most unnatural attributes would be blindness and 
eating, and blind mouths becomes a bold condemnation of iniqui- 
tous practice in false shepherds. For a striking study of the 
whole passage from which these points are taken, see Ruskin, 
Sesame and Lilies^ 20-22. 

123. When they list, when it is their pleasure. See John 
iii. 8. 

128. The grim wolf with privy paw. The reference here is to 
the accessions which the Romish church was quickly making to 



LYCIDAS. 463 

Daily devours apace, and nothing said ; 

130 But that two-handed engine at the door 

Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more." 

Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past. 
That shrunk thy streams ; return, Sicilian Muse, 
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast 

135 Their bells, and flowerets of a thousand hues. 
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use. 
Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, 
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks, 
Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes, 

140 That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers, 
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. 
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. 
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine. 
The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet, 

145 The glowing violet, 

itself, through the influence of the court. It is barely possible 
that Milton was girding at the Privy Council, which with the 
king was practically the government of the realm, in opposition 
to the parliament. 

130. Two-handed engine. The term engine was used indis- 
criminately of implements large and small. It took two hands 
to swing the executioner's axe. 

132. The poet, remembering how far he has been led away 
from the theme he entered on, makes this sudden transition. 
The river Alpheus was fabled to have passed under the sea and 
reissued in Sicily. 

135. Bells, i. e. bell-like flowers. 

136. Use. See line 67. 

138. Swart-star, i. e. the dog-star. 

142. Rathe. This positive has died out of familiar use, but 
the comparative remains in rather, earlier, sooner. It appears 
from the manuscript of the poem, preserved at Cambridge, that 
this passage enumerating the flowers was an afterthought, and 
elaborated by Milton with great care. 

143. Crow-toe hardly sounds as natural to us as crow foot. 



464 JOHN MILTON. 

The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine, 
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, 
And every flower that sad embroidery wears : 
Bids amaranthus all his beauty shed, 

150 And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, 
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies. 
For so to interpose a little ease, 
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. 
Ay me! Whilst thee the shores and sounding 
seas 

155 Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurl'd, 
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, 
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide 
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world ; 
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, 

160 Sleep' st by the fable of Bellerus old, 

Where the great vision of the guarded mount 
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold ; 
Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth. 
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth. 

165 Weep no more, woful Shepherds, weep no more, 
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead. 
Sunk though he be beneath the wat'ry floor ; 

151. Hearse, tomb. 

158. Monstrous world, world of monsters. 

160. Bellerus was an old Cornish giant. 

161. The guarded mount is St. Michael's mount on the coast of 
Cornwall. 

162. Namancos and Bayona stand for a tower and castle in 
Spain. 

163. Angel, i. e. St. Michael. 

165. The poet rises above the thought of the dead body, 
washed hither and thither by the waves, to the imperishable 
spirit. 



LYCIDAS. 465 

So sinks the day-star in tlie ocean bed, 
And yet anon repairs liis drooping head, 

170 And tricks liis beams, and with new spangled ore 
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky. 
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high. 
Thro' the dear might of him that walk'd the waves, 
Where other groves, and other streams along, 

175 With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves. 
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song, 
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. 
There entertain him all the saints above, 
In solemn troops, and sweet societies, 

180 That sing, and singing in their glory move, 
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. 
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more ; 
Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore, 
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good 

135 To all that wander in that ]3erilous flood. 

Thus sang the uncouth swain to th' oaks and rills. 
While the still morn went out with sandals gray. 
He touch'd the tender stops of various quills, 
With eager thought w^arbling his Doric lay ; 

190 And now the sun had stretch'd out all the hills. 
And now was dropt into the western bay ; 
At last he rose, and twitch'd his mantle blew, 
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new. 

168. Day-star, sun. "Till thy day-star from on high visit 
me." 

186. Milton here speaks in his 9,wn Yoi<5B, not in that of the 
feigned shepherd. 

190. Stretch'd out all the hills, i. e. made long shadows, 

193. A line often misqu,oted, fields being read for woods. 
Milton was Qjq the, eye of his departure for Italy. 



FRANCIS BACON.^ 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

"Francis Bacon," says his great biographer, James 
Spedding, " was born among great events, and brought up 
among the persons who had to deal with them. It was on 
the 22d of January, 1560-61, while the young Queen of 
Scotland, a two-months' widow, was rejecting the terms of 
reconciliation with England which Elizabeth proffered, 
and a new Pope in the Vatican was preparing to offer the 
terms of reconciliation with Rome which Elizabeth rejected, 
that he came crying into the world, the youngest son of Sir 
Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and Ann, 
second daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, an accomplished 
lady, sister-in-law to the then Secretary of State, Sir Wil- 
liam Cecil. . . . What his mother taught him we do not know ; 
but we know that she was a learned, eloquent, and religious 
woman, full of affection and puritanic fervor, deeply inter- 
ested in the condition of the Church, and perfectly believing 
that the cause of the Nonconformists was the whole cause 
of Christ. . . . Neither do we know what his father taught 
him ; but he appears to have designed him for the service of 
the State, and we need not doubt that the son of Elizabeth's 
Lord Keeper, and nephew of her principal secretary, early 
imbibed a reverence for the mysteries of statesmanship, and 

1 It is irregular to speak of Lord Bacon, though the form is 
so coramon as almost to be usage. He was Francis Bacon, Lord 
Verulam, Viscount of St. Albans. 



rajstmrPFH-B-nTHi 




BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 467 

a deep sense of the dignity, responsibility, and importance of 
the statesman's calling. The Queen often talked with him, 
and playfully called him her young Lord Keeper. 

" So situated, it must have been as difficult for a young 
and susceptible imagination not to aspire after civil digni- 
ties as for a boy bred in camps not to long to be a soldier. 
But the time for these was not yet come. For the present 
his field of ambition was still in the school-room and li- 
brary ; where, perhaps, from the delicacy of his constitu- 
tion, he was more at home than in the playground. His 
career there was victorious ; new prospects of boundless 
extent opening on every side ; till at length, just about the 
age at which an intellect of quick growth begins to be con- 
scious of original power, he was sent to the university, 
where he hoped to learn all that men knew. By the time, 
however, that he had gone through the usual course and 
heard what the various professors had to say, he was 
conscious of a disappointment. It seems that toward the 
end of the sixteenth century men neither knew nor aspired 
to know more than was to be learned from Aristotle. . . . 
It was then [before he had completed his fifteenth year] that 
a thought struck him, the date of which deserves to be 
recorded, not for anything in the thought itself, which had 
probably occurred to others before him, but for its influence 
upon his after-life. If our study of nature be thus barren, 
he thought, our method of study must be wrong ; might not 
a better method be found ? The suggestion was simple and 
obvious. The singularity was in the way he took hold of it. 
. . . He could at once imagine like a poet and execute like 
a clerk of the works. Upon the conviction This may be 
done, followed at once the question How may it be done ? 
Upon that question answered followed the resolution to try 
and do it. . . . 

" Of Bacon's life I am persuaded that no man will ever 
form a correct idea, unless he bear in mind that from very 
early youth his heart was divided between these three ob- 



468 FRANCIS BACON. 

jects [the cause of reformed religion, of his native coun- 
try, of the human race through all their generations], dis- 
tinct but not discordant ; ^nd that though the last and in 
our eyes the greatest was his favorite and his own, the other 
two never lost their hold upon his affections. Not until he 
felt his years huddling and hurrying to their close did he 
consent to abandon the hope of doing something for them 
all ; nor indeed is it easy to find any period of his life in 
which some fortunate turn of affairs might not have enabled 
him to fulfil it." 

Bacon entered Parliament when he was twenty-four. 
This was the beginning of his active pubHc life. The for- 
tunes of a public man were very much bound up in those 
of some powerful person at court, and Bacon attached him- 
self to the Earl of Essex. But Essex was now in, now out 
of favor with the Queen, and Bacon's fortunes fluctuated 
accordingly. For sixteen years Bacon continued his con- 
nection. At the end of that time it fell to him to take part 
in the prosecution of Essex for treason. Six years later, 
when James I. was on the throne, Bacon was made solici- 
tor-general. He was promoted to be attorney-general in 
1612, and in 1621 was created Viscount St. Albans. Dur- 
ing all this time he had taken an active part in all the great 
discussions which went on in Parliament. 

Not only his own strong tastes, but the circumstances of 
his life conspired, meanwhile, to promote his literary and 
philosophical studies. He was often out of favor and 
forced back into private life. When the Earl of Essex 
was embarking on his perilous course, which ended in his 
execution for treason. Bacon was pursuing ardently the 
great scheme which he had conceived in his youth, and 
from the time when he was about thirty-five till the end of 
his life he scarcely intermitted his labors. The results are 
in many volumes, written most in Latin, a few in English. 
His great contribution to human thought cannot be summed 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 469 

up in a sentence, but it may be said that he so set forth the 
principles which should govern men in the study of nature 
as to give a great impetus to the human mind in its search 
for truth. 

Something of the manner of his writing may be learned 
from his Essays. These he wrote in English. The whole 
collection would make a book of about two hundred pages 
like this, and it is the best known of his works, for, unlike 
his philosophical writings, his Essays speak directly to every 
intelligent man ; they are the wise thoughts of a great 
man about matters which are of common interest to all men. 
In Bacon's own words : " I do now publish my Essays ; 
which, of all my other works have been most current ; for 
that, as it seems, they come home to men's business and 
bosoms." 

When Bacon was created Baron Verulam of Verulam, 
he was also made Lord Chancellor, and held the high office 
which the name implies for three years, when there began 
to be complaint of abuses in the courts of justice and chan- 
cery. The abuses had long continued, but the attack upon 
them now involved the integrity of Bacon himself. He was 
found guilty, with others, of taking presents from those whose 
cases he was trying. There can be little doubt that he fell 
into customs already existing, but it would be unjust to as- 
sume that he was a corrupt judge. Nevertheless, like many 
others, careless in their inquiry into the right and wrong use 
of money, he was overtaken by the storm, and in so far as 
he was conspicuous, his fall was more marked. He was 
removed from office, and became a poor man. He strug- 
gled on in retirement, seeking a royal pardon, and endeav- 
oring to finish his great philosophical work. It was a bitter 
close of a great life, and the nobility of the man appears 
in a sentence which he wrote at this time of personal dis- 
grace : — 

"I was the justest judge that was in England these fifty 



470 FRANCIS BACON. 

years. But it was the justest censure in Parliament that 
was these two hundred years." 

He was in the midst of his experiments when he was sud- 
denly taken ill, and died in his sixty-seventh year, April 9, 
1626. 



BACON'S ESSAYS. 



OF TRAVEL. 

• 

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of educa- 
tion ; in the elder, a part of experience. He that 
travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance 
into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel. 
That young men travel under some tutor, or grave 
servant, I allow well ; so that he be such a one that 
hath the language, and hath been in the country be- 
fore ; whereby he may be able to tell them what 
things are worthy to be seen in the country where 
they go ; what acquaintances they are to seek ; what 
exercises or discipline the place yieldeth. For else 
young men shall go hooded, and look abroad little. It 
is a strange thing, that in sea voyages, where there is 
nothing to be seen but sky and sea, men should make 
diaries ; but in land-travel, wherein so much is to be 
observed, for the most part they omit it ; as if chance 
were fitter to be registered than observation. Let 
diaries therefore be brought in use. The things to be 
seen and observed are, the courts of princes, specially 
when they give audience to ambassadors ; the courts of 
justice, while they sit and hear causes ; and so of con- 
sistories ecclesiastic ; the churches and monasteries, 
with the monuments which are therein extant ; the 
walls and fortifications of cities and towns, and so the 
havens and harbors ; antiquities and ruins ; libraries ; 



472 FRANCIS BACON. 

colleges, disputations, and lectures, where any are ; 
shipping and navies ; houses and gardens of state and 
pleasure, near great cities ; armories ; arsenals ; maga- 
zines ; exchanges ; burses ; warehouses ; exercises of 
horsemanship, fencing, training of soldiers, and the 
like ; comedies, such whereunto the better sort of per- 
sons do resort ; treasuries of jewels and robes ; cabi- 
nets and rarities ; and, to conclude, whatsoever is 
memorable in the places where they go. After all 
which the tutors or servants ought to make diligent 
inquiry. As for triumphs, masks, feasts, weddings, 
funerals, capital executions, and such shows, men need 
not to be put in mind of them ; yet are they not to be 
neglected. If you will have a young man to put his 
travel into a little room, and in short time to gather 
much, this you must do. First as was said, he must 
have some entrance into the language before he goeth. 
Then he must have such a servant or tutor as know- 
eth the country, as was likewise said. Let him carry 
with him also some card or book describing the coun- 
try where he travelleth, which will be a good key to 
his inquiry. Let him keep also a diary. Let him 
not stay long in one city or town ; more or less as the 
place deserveth, but not long ; nay, when he stayeth 
in one city or town, let him change his lodging from 
one end and part of the town to another ; which is a 
great adamant of acquaintance. Let him sequester 
himself from the company of his countrymen, and diet 
in such places where there is good company of the 
nation where he travelleth. Let him upon his re- 
moves from one place to another, procure recommen- 
dation to some person of quality residing in the place 
whither he removeth ; that he may use his favor in 
those things he desireth to see or know. Thus he may 



ESSAYS. 473 

abridge liis travel witli much profit. As for tlie ac- 
quaintance wliicli is to be sought in travel ; that which 
is most of all profitable, is acquaintance with the sec- 
retaries and employed men of ambassadors ; for so in 
travelling in one country he shall suck the experience 
of many. Let him also see and visit eminent persons 
in all kinds, which are of great name abroad ; that he 
may be able to tell how the life agreeth with the fame. 
For quarrels, they are with care and discretion to be 
avoided. They are commonly for mistresses, healths, 
place, and words. And let a man beware how he 
keepeth company with choleric and quarrelsome per- 
sons ; for they will engage him into their own quar- 
rels. When a traveller returneth home, let him not 
leave the countries where he hath travelled altogether 
behind him ; but maintain a correspondence by letters 
with those of his acquaintance which are of most 
worth. And let his travel appear rather in his dis- 
course than in his apparel or gesture ; and in his dis- 
course let him be rather advised in his answers, than 
forward to tell stories ; and let it appear that he doth 
not change his country manners for those of foreign 
parts ; but only prick in some flowers of that he hath 
learned abroad into the customs of his own country. 



OF STUDIES. 

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for 
ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness 
and retiring ; for ornament, is in discourse ; and for 
ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. 
For expert men can execute, and perhajis judge of 
particulars, one by one ; but the general counsels, and 



474 FRANCIS BACON. 

the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from 
those that are learned. To spend too much time in 
studies is sloth ; to use them too much for ornament, is 
affectation ; to make judgment wholly by their rules, 
is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and 
are perfected by experience : for natural abilities are 
like natural plants that need proyning ^ by study ; 
and studies themselves do give forth directions too 
much at large, except they be bounded in by experi- 
ence. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men ad- 
mire them, and wise men use them ; for they teach 
not their own use ; but that is a wisdom without them, 
and above them, won by observation. Read not to 
contradict and confute ; nor to believe and take for 
granted ; nor to find talk and discourse ; but to weigh 
and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to 
be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and di- 
gested ; that is, some books are to be read only in 
parts ; others to be read, but not curiously ; and some 
few to be read wholly, and with diligence and atten- 
tion. Some books also may be read by deputy, and 
extracts made of them by others ; but that would be 
only in the less important arguments, and the meaner 
sort of books ; else distilled books are like common 
distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full 
man ; conference a ready man ; and writing an exact 
man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had 
need have a great memory; if he confer little, he 
had need have a present wit ; and if he read little he 
had need have much cunning, to seem to know that 
he doth not. Histories make men wise ; poets witty ; 
the mathematics subtile ; natural philosophy deep ; 
moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. 

^ Proyning^ pruning. 



ESSAYS. 475 

Aheunt studia in mores. [The studies pass into the 
manners.] Nay there is no stond or impediment in 
the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies : like 
as diseases of the body may have aj^propriate exer- 
cises. Bowling is good for the stone and reins ; shoot- 
ing for the lungs and breast ; gentle walking for the 
stomach ; riding for the head ; and the like. So if a 
man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathe- 
matics ; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called 
away never so little, he must begin again. If his wit 
be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him 
study the schoolmen ; for they are cymini sectores 
[splitters of hairs]. If he be not aj)t to beat over 
matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illus- 
trate another, let him study the lawyers' cases. So 
every defect of the mind may have a special receipt. 



OF SUSPICION. 

Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst 
birds, they ever fly by twilight. Certainly they are to 
be repressed, or at the least well guarded ; for they 
cloud the mind ; they leese friends ; and they check 
with business, whereby business cannot go on currently 
and constantly. They dispose kings to tyranny, hus- 
bands to jealousy^ wise men to irresolution and mel- 
ancholy. They are defects, not in the heart, but in 
the brain ; for they take place in the stoutest natures ; 
as in the example of Henry the Seventh of England. 
There was not a more suspicious man, nor a more stout. 
And in such a composition they do small hurt. For 
commonly they are not admitted, but with examination, 
whether they be likely or no ? But in fearful natures 



476 FRANCIS BACON. 

they gain ground too fast. There is nothing makes a 
man suspect much, more than to know little, and there- 
fore men should remedy suspicion by procuring to 
know more, and not to keep their suspicions in 
smother. What would men have ? Do they think those 
they employ and deal with are saints ? Do they not 
think they will have their own ends, and be truer to 
themselves than to them ? Therefore there is no bet- 
ter way to moderate suspicions, than to account upon 
such suspicions as true and yet to bridle them as false. 
For so far a man ought to make use of suspicions, as 
to provide, as if that should be true that he suspects, 
yet it may do him no hurt. Suspicions that the mind 
of itself gathers are but buzzes ; but suspicions that are 
artificially nourished, and put into men's heads by the 
tales and whisperings of others, have stings. Cer- 
tainly, the best means to clear the way in this same 
wood of suspicions, is frankly to communicate them 
with the party that he suspects ; for thereby he shall 
be sure to know more of the truth of them than he did 
before ; and withal shall make that party more cir- 
cumspect not to give further cause of suspicion. But 
this would not be done to men of base natures ; for 
they, if they find themselves once suspected, will never 
be true. The Italian says, Sospetto licentia fede ; as 
if suspicion did give a passport to faith ; but it ought 
rather to kindle it to discharge itself. 



OF NEGOTIATING. 

It is generally better to deal by speech than by 
letter ; and by the mediation of a third than by a 
man's self. Letters are good, when a man would 



ESS A YS. 477 

draw an answer by letter back again ; or wlien it may 
serve for a man's justification afterwards to produce 
his own letter ; or where it may be danger to be in- 
terrupted, or heard by pieces. To deal in person is 
good, when a man's face breedeth regard, as com- 
monly with inferiors ; or in tender cases, where a 
man's eye upon the countenance of him with whom he 
speaketh may give him a direction how far to go ; 
and generally where a man will reserve to himself 
liberty either to disavow or to expound. In choice 
of instruments, it is better to choose men of a 
plainer sort, that are like to do that that is committed 
to them, and to report back again faithfully the suc- 
cess, than those that are cunning to contrive out of 
other men's business somewhat to grace themselves, 
and will help the matter in report for satisfaction sake. 
Use also such persons as affect the business wherein 
they are employed ; for that quickeneth much ; and 
such as are fit for the matter ; as bold men for expos- 
tulation, fair-spoken men for persuasion, crafty men 
for inquiry and observation, fro ward and absurd men 
for business that doth not well bear out itself. Use 
also such as have been lucky, and prevailed before in 
things wherein you have employed them ; for that 
breeds confidence, and they will strive to maintain 
their prescription. It is better to sound a person with 
whom one deals afar off, than to fall upon the point 
at first ; except you mean to surprise him by some 
short question. It is better dealing with men in ap- 
petite, than with those that are where they would be. 
If a man deal with another upon conditions, the 
start or first performance is all ; which a man cannot 
reasonably demand, except either the nature of the 
thing be such, which must go before ; or else a man 



478 FRANCIS BACON. 

can persuade the otlier party tliat he shall still need 
him in some other thing ; or else that he be counted 
the honester man. All practice is to discover, or to 
work. Men discover themselves in trust, in passion, 
at unawares, and of necessity, when they would have 
somewhat done and cannot find an apt pretext. If 
you would work any man, you must either know his 
nature and fashions, and so lead him ; or his ends, 
and so persuade him ; or his weakness and disadvan- 
tages, and so awe him ; or those that have interest in 
him, and so govern him. In dealing with cunning 
persons, we must ever consider their ends, to interpret 
their speeches ; and it is good to say little to them, 
and that which they least look for. In all negotia- 
tions of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and 
reap at once ; but must prepare business, and so ripen 
it by degrees. 



OF MASQUES AND TRIUMPHS. 

These things are but toys, to come amongst such 
serious observations. But yet, since princes will have 
such things, it is better they should be graced with 
elegancy than daubed with cost. Dancing to song, 
is a thing of great state and pleasure. I understand 
it, that the song be in quire, placed aloft, and accom- 
panied with some broken music ; and the ditty fitted 
to the device. Acting in song, especially in dialogues, 
hath an extreme good grace ; I say acting, not dan- 
cing (for that is a mean and vulgar thing) ; and the 
voices of the dialogue would be strong and manly (a 
base and a tenor ; no treble) ; and the ditty high and 
tragical ; not nice or dainty. Several quires, placed 



ESSAYS. 479 

one over against another, and taking the voice by 
catches, anthem- wise, give great pleasure. Turning 
dances into figure is a childish curiosity. And gen- 
erally let it be noted, that those things which I here 
set down are such as do naturally take the sense, and 
not respect petty wonderments. It is true, the altera- 
tions of scenes, so it be quietly and without noise, are 
things of great beauty and pleasure ; for they feed and 
relieve the eye, before it be full of the same object. 
Let the scenes abound with light, specially colored 
and varied ; and let the masquers, or any other, that 
are to come down from the scene, have some motions 
upon the scene itself before their coming down ; for 
it draws the eye strangely, and makes it with great 
pleasure to desire to see that it cannot perfectly dis- 
cern. Let the songs be loud and cheerful, and not 
chirpings or pulings. Let the music likewise be sharp 
and loud, and well placed. The colors that show best 
by candle-light, are white, carnation, and a kind of 
sea-water-green ; and oes, or spangs, as they are of no 
great cost, so they are of most glory. As for rich 
embroidery, it is lost and not discerned. Let the suits 
of the masquers be graceful, and such as become the 
person when the vizards are off ; not after examples 
of known attires ; Turks, soldiers, mariners, and the 
like. Let anti-masques not be long ; they have been 
commonly of fools, satyrs, baboons, wild-men, antics, 
beasts, sprites, witches, Ethiops, pigmies, turquets, 
nymphs, rustics, Cupids, statuas moving, and the like. 
As for angels, it is not comical enough to put them in 
anti-masques ; and anything that is hideous, as devils, 
giants, is on the other side as unfit. But chiefly, let 
the music of them be recreative, and with some strange 
changes. Some sweet odors suddenly coming forth. 



480 FRANCIS BACON, 

without any drops falling, are, in such a company as 
there is steam and heat, things of great pleasure and 
refreshment. Double masques, one of men, another 
of ladies, addeth state and variety. But all is nothing 
except the room be kept clear and neat. 

For jousts, and tourneys, and barriers ; the glories of 
them are chiefly in the chariots, wherein the challeng- 
ers make their entry ; especially if they be drawn 
with strange beasts : as lions, bears, camels, and the 
like ; or in the devices of their entrance ; or in the 
bravery of their liveries ; or in the goodly furniture 
of their horses and armor. But enough of these toys. 



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